


I Want You

by HATECADILLAC



Category: Blue Velvet (1986), ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Stands (JoJo), Bisexual Male Character, Crimes & Criminals, Crossover, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Mildly Dubious Consent, Murder, Mystery, Psychological Drama, Sexual Slavery, Slow Burn, full disclosure this is gonna be fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-01-02 22:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 63,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21169064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HATECADILLAC/pseuds/HATECADILLAC
Summary: After finding a severed human hand in a field, college freshman Josuke Higashikata soon discovers a sinister underworld lying just beneath his idyllic suburban home town.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first time posting in over a year AND first time writing jojo fic let's roll

_“Good morning, Morioh! And what a beautiful morning it is, too...the perfect day to spend some quality time outside with your friends and family. We have our first song of the day coming up in just a few moments, now…”_

Josuke stifled a yawn with one hand from the back of the car, tucking his knees up to his chest and staring blankly out the window as the side of the highway slowly but surely started to blur into his familiar hometown. He was annoyed with himself at how tired he felt; coming back home from college for the first summer, it should’ve been something real exciting, energizing him. He could feel that urge pricking at him, looking at the scenery go by, the want to have feelings about it with no ability to follow through. The most he could muster was a vague nausea. He first blamed it on the jet lag, following the horrible red-eye his mom had booked him on to get him back as soon as possible, but he knew it wasn’t just that. It’d be stupid to think otherwise...that the _reason_ he was back wasn’t fucking with his head a little.

It didn’t help that no one was talking. It made sense for Jotaro, he supposed, who was stony-faced as ever as he focused on the road ahead of them, but not even his mom had anything to say. Yeah, that was fucking with his head a little, too; they’d exchanged emails and talked on the phone at holidays and stuff, obviously, but this was the first time he’d seen her in person since he moved into his dorm, and she was all business. Every so often she’d lean back from the passenger’s seat to look at him, this sad worried-stressed expression on her face, and try a little smile before returning to her own brooding. The only sound in the car was the radio, playing uncommented upon, and it almost seemed like an intrusion. 

As they passed the radio tower, she turned back again, same expression, only this time she spoke, voice strained with lack of use. “Josuke,” she started, coughing a little before continuing. “When we get to the hospital...I want you to call him Dad, okay? Can you do that? For me?”

—

It’s not like they weren’t expecting something like this to happen, sometime. Mr. Joestar—Joseph—Josuke’s dad—whoever—was old as hell, after all, and, you know, these things become a real possibility, not just some freaky what-if that keeps your mom up at night. That didn’t make it any less scary or shocking, though, when (according to the frantic phone call Josuke had received), Mr. Joestar suddenly keeled over while watering the garden and keeping an eye on baby Shizuka. It was a god-send Jotaro had been out there with them, moving fast enough to stop Shizuka from falling on her head as Mr. Joestar lost his grip on her, fast enough to call 911. Seriously. If he’d been anywhere else—even just upstairs inside the house—Josuke bit his lip, frowning as the unpleasant thought came to mind.

Josuke didn’t know exactly still if it had been a stroke or a heart attack or what; he’d gotten the phone call real late at night, and his mom had been practically incomprehensible, wheezing with what was clearly the remaining racks of half-suppressed sobs. Maybe it was better not to know, then. What he _did_ know, and what was actually important, was that Mr. Joestar's condition was currently stable—shitty, yeah, but stable. But. You never _really_ know. And if his mom’s reaction was anything to go off of, this was still definitely one of those _get every family member you can into town ASAP_ hospitalizations.

He’d had the whole car ride—and the whole flight—to sort out how he felt about this whole thing, but he hadn’t gotten around to doing it yet, so his stomach felt like it was in a fist fight with itself as the three of them pulled into the parking lot, as they silently piled into S City General Hospital, as a tired sounding nurse checked them in and gave them the room number. He tried to come up with some logline for how he felt about the old geezer, some tidy soundbite he could hold onto...something he could say for a eulogy, at a funeral. But it wasn’t that easy. Like, that was his _dad_—sort of. Josuke hadn’t even known Mr. Joestar existed until two years ago (and vice versa), which he was pretty sure slides any dad firmly into deadbeat territory. That pissed him off a little, knowing how hard his mom had to work to keep the two of them steady, especially when he was a little kid, so maybe he was mad, and that was it. But it felt really fucked up to be _mad_ at some eighty year old full of tubes in a hospital bed, even if he was your bastard dad.

Thinking about it more, he wasn’t really his dad, not in any way that mattered. Right, Higashikata Josuke had no dad; he learned that early, listening to school parents whispering worriedly, seeing other kids being confused. That fact didn’t change because the guy decided to show up eighteen years late. Josuke’s portrait of Mr. Joestar was much more flattering when he wasn’t his dad—some funny old man who had wandered into his life, who his mom cared a lot about, who looked after Shizuka like a granddaughter and told weird rambling stories about his long life. Thinking about it like that, the word of the day was _scared_; scared of everything, but not enough to define any one fear that could then be managed. He was anxious over weird things, like how he couldn’t remember exactly the last time they’d spoken, the memory tucked away somewhere in those innumerable hours of babysitting and storytelling. Maybe this visit would be good for him, then, but the idea of that last memory being here actually made him feel worse about it.

Wriggling in that scared-mad, Josuke nearly had a heart attack himself when they opened the door to the hospital room. Mr. Joestar’s eyes were shut, and he was silent, completely silent but for the beeping of everything they’d plugged into him. Josuke wanted to shout that they were too late, that he had died and no one had noticed yet, and he really believed that in his heart for a second, stupid as it was. But then a nurse spoke from behind him in a sickly sweet voice, making him jump:

“Alright, Joseph, some people are here to visit. Your whole family’s here! Your son even flew _all the way_ from _K Prefecture_ to come see you!”

And the old man opened his eyes, slowly, and Josuke realized he was still standing in the doorway like an idiot while everyone else had sat down. They were all staring at him expectantly, like they were all waiting to hear what was going to come out of his mouth.

Josuke gulped, and, for the first time in two years, said “Hi, Dad,” in English to be sure Mr. Joestar understood despite how thick and awkward it felt in his mouth. It seemed to take a second to get through, but then he smiled, so maybe Josuke’s mom had been right and that was the right thing to do after all.

—

They stayed for the full duration of visiting hours, just sitting and talking to him (though maybe talking _at_ him was more accurate a description). Josuke’s mom made him recite his whole class schedule, from _both_ semesters, and describe exactly how each class had gone, what the professors were like, how hard the finals were—something he had a feeling he would be doing a _lot_ in the next few days as various relatives trickled into Morioh. He didn’t know exactly how long they were there for, but eventually the nurse came in and gave Jotaro this pitying but expectant look, as in _don’t make me say it but you all have to get out of here now_. They all stood, lingering more than a little awkwardly, and said their goodbyes one by one; Josuke tried to wire as much of his brain power into remembering his, you know, just in case.

With that, he guessed his first summer break of college had finally started, weird as everything was. He tried to keep it out of his mind as much as he could. After all, he had _way_ more important stuff to think about, now that he was back in Morioh—

“Dude!”

“DUDE!!!”

Josuke was nearly knocked backwards by the force with which Okuyasu ran and hugged him, laughing. He felt exactly the same, though his behavior was much more reserved than Okuyasu’s; they emailed and called each other on the phone practically every day, but that was nothing compared to the two of them _together_, physically in real space and time.

“I missed you so much, man—”

“Yeah, yeah, I missed you too.”

“I’m serious…! It’s so cool seeing you…”

“Yeah—are you crying?”

“No!” Okuyasu retorted, but he turned his head away from Josuke and swiped at his eyes with one hand as he said it, so Josuke started laughing. 

“You’re totally crying!”

“I told you, I’m not!”

“You _so_ are!”

“No!!!” He sniffled indignantly, his faux anger starting to fade as he couldn’t keep a giggle out of his voice.

“Okay, maybe a little.”

Then they were both laughing, really laughing, on and off in violent peals until one would stop, look over at the other, and be unable to keep from starting again. 

The plan had been to go to Rengatei for coffee and catch up there, but they never made it that far, instead just wandering aimlessly around Morioh and talking. They could go for hours like this, never landing anywhere, caught up entirely in conversation and fully trapped in each other’s words and ideas. For Josuke, it was one of the things that made him feel like he was home: this time that didn’t even really feel like time, spent talking about everything and nothing.

“So I’m taking some classes at the community college in S City...I dunno. I still have no idea what I even want to _do_...but I’m learning some real interesting stuff. Like, I have to take this bio class for a requirement, right? And it’s all about diseases and stuff, and how they work and what they do to your body. When someone gets sick and dies or whatever, I’d always thought about it like it was the virus that killed them, but that’s not super true because a virus doesn’t have a brain to even _want_ to kill. It’s more like your body tries so hard to protect you, that it keeps ramping up your immune system, which works most of the time to get rid of any viruses, but if the virus is too strong or something eventually your body keeps trying and trying so hard that it accidentally kills _you_ instead. So, I dunno. That really stuck with me, I guess. It’s freaky.”

“Yeah...huh.”

Before they knew it the sun had started was starting to go down, and their legs were starting to get sore, so it was probably time to stop. They still had to walk home, but there was a brief moment of pause in which they perched on the curb outside of the now-closed Rengatei with their knees up to their chests (the irony of where they ended up not lost on Josuke).

“It was nice hanging out with you, dude,” Okuyasu eventually said, cutting the silence of them individually catching their breaths.

“It was nice hanging out with you too.”

“I’m so glad you’re back...I mean, it sucks what happened with the old man and everything but—I really did miss you.”

“I was gonna come back either way, man. I missed you too.”

“It’s nice talking to Koichi and Yukako and everyone still—obviously they’re my friends too, but—” Okuyasu continued, his brow furrowed slightly as though he were deep in thought about something. “I don’t know. Talking to you it’s like...different, somehow? Like, there’s this feeling in my chest that’s real nice and I feel like I can say whatever, and you won’t make fun of me or call me an idiot or anything. And even if you do it’ll be a joke, and I’ll know, and you won’t actually _really_ think that. Is that weird?”

“No,” Josuke replied quickly without thinking, and took a minute to actually process what Okuyasu had said before elaborating. “I think I know what you mean. I guess I kinda feel like that too. I mean, you’re my best friend, man. So it’s not weird.”

A grin spread over Okuyasu’s face, slowly, and Josuke couldn’t help but smile a little too, watching the emotion work its way through the other boy’s expression.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re my best friend, too.” Okuyasu was quiet for a moment, before looking up at the sky and standing, stretching with an audible crack of his back. “We should probably start walking back, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

The rest of their conversation as they walked was lighter in tone, or at least _felt_ that way; Josuke didn’t know exactly what to make of whatever it was Okuyasu had told him, and especially didn’t know why he was even still thinking about it. That warm feeling Okuyasu had mentioned, Josuke felt it now, felt it thinking about him saying that. It had almost been like a confession of something, but not really, because nothing weird or dramatic happened. It was just because they were best friends, he eventually decided, and was satisfied with his own conclusion.

He was so wrapped up in that odd thought, he hardly noticed Okuyasu tugging at his sleeve, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and calling Josuke’s name to get his attention.

“Oi, Josuke, look over there. Come on. I think there’s something in the field—-”

“Huh?”

“I saw something, like, glittering. In the field.” He hooked a thumb behind him in the direction of the field in question, where sure enough something seemed to be catching the light of the setting sun. Josuke’s eyes went wide, and he turned to Okuyasu with a grin.

“What, do you think it’s like, a ring or something?”

“Maybe, maybe. Wanna check it out?”

“Totally.” Josuke started walking in the object’s direction, quickly looking back at Okuyasu, who returned his grin with a thumbs up. Josuke kept walking, a fair distance into the field, looking along the ground in search of anything that might have reflected the light like they’d seen. So far, he wasn’t finding anything, just dirt and rocks and grass...but then he _did_ find something, and he felt his heart sink violently as he caught sight of it. 

There was no way this could be real. No fucking way. He blinked hard, squeezing his eyes tight on the off chance that maybe this was some weird combination of dirt/rocks/grass that his tired head was making look like _that_, and that it would be gone once he opened his eyes again. But it still sat plainly in the grass in front of him, real and there and _real_.

“Holy shit,” he said under his breath, and from behind him Okuyasu called out, not realizing yet.

“Did you find it yet?”

Josuke turned to face him, and he guessed he wasn’t able to keep his shocked expression off his face, because Okuyasu too seemed to grow worried, even though he had no idea.

“Dude it’s a hand.”


	2. Chapter 2

“A hand?”

“Yeah.” Josuke looked back at it quickly, as if to confirm for himself, but broke his gaze as nausea started to permeate him. Okuyasu swallowed hard.

“Like, a _human _hand?”

“Yeah,” Josuke repeated, voice starting to strain slightly with fear. “Just—get over here and look at it. Come on.”

Okuyasu didn’t have to be asked twice, walking over where Josuke was with a nervous urgency and kneeling beside him to get a better look at it. No question, this was a human hand, a fucking _human hand _in a _field _in _Morioh _of all places. They’d been right in thinking there was a ring—shiny silver with a small jewel against the hand’s pale and dead flesh, like a sick joke. The fingernails were painted a dark red, like the dark red that stained the base of the hand where the wrist was supposed to connect to the arm; Josuke subconsciously clutched at his stomach, starting to feel sick. The two of them stared at the hand for a long while, not speaking, then turned to stare at each other, which somehow made everything more real.

“What do we do?” Okuyasu asked in a quiet voice, and Josuke let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, thankful not to have to be the first one to speak.

“I dunno. Shit, this is—-I have no idea.”

They stayed quiet again, then, looking back at the hand, though neither of them really wanted to. Okuyasu bounced one leg with nervous energy, biting his lip, before fishing in his bag for his cell phone and flipping it open with shaky hands.

“I’m gonna call my brother.”

“What?”

“Uh, he’s doing an internship kind of thing at the police station right now,” Okuyasu started to explain, averting eye contact. “So, I dunno, maybe he’ll know what we should do about it and he can tell us. Or he can do something about it himself.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah, do that,” Josuke quickly agreed, but there was hardly any need to since Okuyasu was already dialling the number and holding the phone against his ear, walking a short distance away to make the call. Truthfully Josuke didn’t exactly have one hundred percent faith in Keicho to not make things worse, but he didn’t feel anywhere near capable of proposing an alternate plan. Again his eyes slid downwards to where the hand sat, confrontational and unmoving, and he felt acid flood into his throat; he swallowed it back down, shutting his eyes, and decided not to look ever again.

—

“Shit, yeah, that’s a human hand.”

Keicho joined their bewildered circle, staring down at the hand as his car idled on the road beside them in a gentle hum. In one hand he was clutching a once-crumpled brown paper bag from Saint Gentlemen’s, which he’d presumably brought for his next course of action: gingerly picking the hand up by a single finger and placing it inside with a grimace.

“Neither of you guys touched it, right?”

Josuke and Okuyasu both obediently shook their heads no, and Keicho sighed. “Okay, good. ‘Cuz it’s fine if my prints are on it, but if either of you show up it’s gonna start to look shady, you know?”

Now they nodded, still unable to think of anything to say. Scary as this was, it was kinda interesting, too, like watching a cop show, only it was real. 

“Okay. Uh. So,” Keicho started, looking increasingly sick to his stomach as seemed to be trying to remember something he had been told. “I’m gonna take this back to the station and pass it off to my supervisor. Then he’ll probably give it to the coroner. Oh!” Something seemed to come to mind as he interrupted himself. “We gotta mark where you found it, too. Hold on—” he quickly looked around on the ground, picking up a small stick before turning to address his brother.

“Oku, gimme one of your shoelaces.”

“Huh? Why?”

“So we can mark the spot, idiot.”

"I don't wanna—"

“Just do it!” Keicho smacked him in the head, annoyed, and Okuyasu begrudgingly bent down to remove a lace and hand it to Keicho. Keicho tied the shoelace around the stick and stuck it in the ground where the hand had been a few moments before, digging it down into the dirt so it wouldn’t fall over. 

“That should do it. Yeah, then someone’ll probably check the morgue records...though I don’t remember anything about someone coming in without a hand. That could mean she’s still alive out there, whoever it belongs to.”

“Can they figure out anything about who it might be just from looking at it?” Josuke asked, and Keicho nodded in affirmation.

“Oh, yeah, a whole ton of stuff. Like, how old she is, or blood type or whether she was dead when it got cut off or not. And how it got cut off, too.” Keicho opened the bag up momentarily to take a morbid second look, closing it up just as fast. “If I had to guess it was probably like...a big kitchen knife or something.” Again he grimaced, and the other two boys returned the look tenfold. 

"I'll let you know if anything ends up happening with it. In the meantime...Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? I’m serious. Like, not even your mom, Josuke. I dunno exactly what’s going on, but if it’s something big…” He trailed off, but Josuke and Okuyasu understood, sharing a nervous but determined look between themselves.

“Well.” Lips still curled with displeasure, Keicho gripped the top of the bag tighter, audibly crinkling the paper. “I’m gonna go drop this off now, then. I think my supervisor should still be in...if anything comes of it I’ll make sure ‘n call or something.” 

“Alright,” Josuke replied, slightly reassured through the still-present sick feeling churning in his gut. “Alright, yeah. That’d be good...you know, if you called.”

This was probably the natural point where the conversation would end, and Keicho would leave, but he lingered longer, a strangled expression like he was trying real hard to get the right words out. “Shit, guys...sucks you had to see that. But, it’s probably nothing really crazy or huge. I mean, we live in _Morioh _. It’s not like—it’s not like freaky stuff happens here like in a big city, you know? So, I guess, don’t worry about it. Is what I’m trying to say.”

As awkward a reassurance it was, Josuke supposed it worked; he felt at least a little less unsettled now, that he had an idea of what was going to happen to the hand. Maybe Keicho was right, and it would be nothing, just some weird occurrence that he and Okuyasu would laugh about together later, maybe tell someone else about and laugh even more. But even as the thought came to mind, Josuke knew he didn’t believe it, not really.

“Alright, I gotta bounce if I wanna get this to the station today,” Keicho finished, taking a few steps towards his car and dragging Okuyasu by the sleeve with him. “Nice to see you, Josuke. Bye. Come on, I’ll drop you off at home, bro.” This last sentence was directed at Okuyasu, who climbed into the car with a wave and a mouthed _bye _in Josuke’s direction. Josuke returned the action, before frowning, opening his mouth to speak.

“Wait, can I get a ride t—”

But Keicho had already sped off, leaving Josuke by himself at the edge of the field. He groaned to himself; now it was _definitely _gonna be dark by the time he got home.

—

“Oi, Josuke.”

Josuke jumped as he heard his name, startled, but it was just Okuyasu; first his voice, disembodied, then slowly coming into sight as he walked forward under a streetlight in an eerie effect. It had gotten dark, after all, black night dark with no stars.

“Jesus, dude, you scared the shit outta me!”

“Sorry.” Immediately something was off about his tone, nearly apologetic, and his body language was nervous, fidgety. Josuke frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just thinkin’ about, you know, the hand,” Okuyasu replied, his words rushed the way he got when he was thinking about something heavy. “And...I dunno. I remembered something. But, I didn’t wanna say it while Keicho was there ‘cuz I knew he’d get all mad at me like he does.”

Josuke couldn’t deny that his interest was piqued. “Alright. Spit it out, man.” Okuyasu swallowed, nodded, before beginning to speak, still fidgety as ever.

“Me and him, our rooms are right next to each other, yeah? And the walls are pretty thin so I can hear him in there all the time. Sometimes...sometimes he’ll talk to his friends on the phone about, you know, his stuff he’s doing at his internship. So I’ve heard a few things.”

“Yeah? What’ve you heard?”

“You know I’m not that smart, so I’m probably mixing up some of the cases,” Okuyasu warned self-deprecatingly, “But...there’s this one name that keeps coming up. This girl singer. She lives here in Morioh, in an apartment pretty close by. I dunno exactly what’s going on with her, but Keicho was saying the cops’ve got her under surveillance or something for a while...he never said nothing about them finding anything, though. And, just, I don’t know, I can’t shake the feeling that she’s got something to do with the hand. I can’t explain why. I just...I just really feel it. That’s probably really dumb, huh?”

“It’s not dumb,” Josuke replied without thinking, furrowing his brow. “What, d’you think it’s her hand?”

“I dunno. Maybe.”

“Maybe. Yeah.”

There was silence, for a moment, where they just stared at each other. It wasn’t something that normally happened to them, this kind of silence, so Josuke spoke again if only to end it.

“That’s really interesting, though. I guess Keicho’ll tell us if that’s the case once he finds out more about the hand.”

“Probably.”

Silence again. There should have _been _something there, a ‘well goodnight Josuke’, or a walking back towards his house, or a hug even, maybe. Clearly he hadn’t gotten everything off his mind yet.

“Dude—”

“Your mom probably wants you back home now, huh?” Okuyasu cut in quickly, as though he’d been waiting for Josuke to give him permission to speak. Josuke blinked, surprised, but shook his head no.

“I mean, not really. She didn’t give me a curfew or anything. Besides, I’m technically an adult now, so even if she did tell me to do something I wouldn’t actually _have _to. Why?”

“Well…” Okuyasu started, but stopped himself, grimacing. “Nah. It’s a dumb idea. Forget about it.”

“Come on! Now you _gotta _say it. I’m sure it’s not that dumb.”

“...Alright.” He smiled a little, convinced, which made Josuke happy in a feedback loop. “I was just gonna ask, uh, do you want me to show you the apartment? It’s not that far away like I said.”

“The girl’s apartment? Uh, sure, yeah!” Josuke wasn’t sure how much stock he was putting in Okuyasu’s theory that she might be connected to the hand they’d found, but he didn’t see any harm in going along with his friend’s idea. Besides...it wasn’t like he was going to say no to spending more time with Okuyasu, especially seeing the way the other boy grinned and started walking, looking over his shoulder to gesture without words for Josuke to follow him.

The apartment building was one Josuke had walked by tons of times before, but had never really thought about; it was just part of the Morioh background for him, one of a hundred contextless buildings with meanings untold. It made more sense at the moment to think about it in reference to what was around it; the Owson next to it, for example, still open and glowing too-white in the otherwise dark surroundings of the street. Thinking about all the times he’d gone to the Owson, then, it started to become strange how little familiarity the building had...it was as if he’d simply never seen it before now. He looked at it now with a determination, as though to make up for that fact. It was a tall and narrow building, all brick and stone, and more than a little run-down. A few windows had their lights on inside, illuminating in spots of yellow on and off as the people inside presumably went about their nights; it was weirdly entrancing, that shifting light, as though the building itself was alive and breathing. Josuke and Okuyasu stood in front of it for longer than they had intended, perhaps, just watching, craning their necks to look up the whole towering height of it. 

“What’s her name?” Josuke asked, not turning to Okuyasu. “Uh, if you know, that is.”

“Huh?” Okuyasu replied at first, but seemed to hear a second later; Josuke couldn’t blame him, being distracted by what they were looking at. “Oh. Yeah, I think I remember...uh...Sugimoto, I think, is the last name?” Josuke ripped his gaze away from the lights to look at Okuyasu, who was concentrating, biting his lip idly. “Sugimoto...Sugimoto Reimi. Yeah, yeah! And she lives on the seventh floor. I don’t know which apartment, though.” His eyes darted up again, and Josuke followed them, so they were looking in sync at the spot.

Later, Josuke would wonder how things might have gone if the two of them had looked away, or looked a second later, or done the right thing and not looked at all, just gone back home like they probably should have by now. Maybe Josuke would have spent the rest of his summer break lounging around his house, playing video games and talking on the phone, or visiting Mr. Joestar at the hospital or visiting his friends anywhere and everywhere. And, eventually, he would have forgotten about the apartment building again, passing it every Owson trip with no comment, and maybe he even would have forgotten about finding the hand, writing it off as some weird blip in the way things are supposed to go. That worry settled low inside of him about all of this would fade away, replaced by normal worries...school, jobs, girls, the kinds of things you’re supposed to think about when you’re a college freshman with your whole adult life ahead of you. Then he would leave Morioh, ready for next semester, and all of this would become a distant, distant, dream, a pleasant dream of his time back home.

There was a light on, on the seventh floor. It was in the third window from the left, and as Josuke and Okuyasu watched, a woman crossed in front of it and stood there, a silhouette in the hypnotizing, all-consuming light. There was no way to discern any of her physical features, other than bobbed hair and a seemingly average height. It was impossible even to tell if she was standing with her back to the window or if she was looking out of it; Josuke found himself wishing, meaninglessly, that it was the latter, so that he could know she was looking at them the same way they were looking at her in that moment. Watching her, there, something seemed to _change _inside of Josuke’s head, profound and sharp, as though he’d been struck through with an arrow. It was _real _, whatever _it _was, whatever had just started with their discovery of the hand in the field, that he now believed had everything to do with this woman here in the window. There was no question in his mind, too, that this was Reimi, the girl singer. It had to be. Who else could it possibly have been? Josuke was shivering where he stood, even though the air around him had no opinion on hot or cold. 

Standing there, looking at her, Josuke felt as though he were receiving a message, a very important message. Maybe it was from her. Maybe it was from God, or Morioh, or whoever. Regardless, someone was whispering in his ear with such urgency; _Something happened, Josuke. Josuke, go find out._

“Reimi,” he said, so quietly that it was more the idea of saying her name. He knew she wouldn’t have heard him, but she turned away from the window and walked into the unknown of her apartment, whatever that meant. Okuyasu turned back to face him, and an understanding passed that this had meant something; exactly _what _it had meant went unsaid, but as they walked back towards their houses together, in silence, Okuyasu reached down and grabbed Josuke’s hand, seeking something. They stopped, together, and another exchange seemed to pass, wordlessly:

_Is this weird?_

_Maybe?_

_I don’t know—_

_We haven’t before—_

_But—_

But Josuke squeezed Okuyasu’s hand back, and they walked the rest of the way like that, together, in the empty street. They would talk about it later, maybe. Or maybe it would get caught up as one of the many weird-ass things that had happened that day, and forgiven in comparison. They said goodnight to each other, detaching and going their separate ways into their houses. Josuke’s mom was still up, and asked him how his day had been, and he told her it was good but he was real tired, so he would get into details tomorrow, maybe. This was half-true. He went up to his room, and fell down onto his bed, eyes closed but not sleeping, instead thinking about the hand, and about Sugimoto Reimi, the girl singer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh YEAH........i'll probably write more of this cuz its very self indulgent for me lmao but let me know what you guys think/if you'd like to see more! thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

Josuke realized that a lot of being back in Morioh was waiting, for better or worse. Waiting in the morning, say, for Jotaro and his mom to wake up so that some combination of them could go to the hospital (two leaving, one staying behind to keep an eye on Shizuka; they had a system worked out). Then, it was waiting in the room with Mr. Joestar, for him to wake up, or make some indication he could hear them, and then it was waiting for a turn to talk, being careful not to accidentally talk over someone or too loudly and risk startling him. It was waiting around the house in-between asking if people were free to hang out, draped over the couch and idly playing video games. Worst of all, however, was waiting to hear back from Keicho about what was happening with the hand.

He’d tried to keep reasonable expectations about how long it would take to get any information; he knew these things took time, after all. Still, he highly doubted there was anything _more_ pressing going on at the police station. Keicho was right—they lived in _Morioh,_ of all places. This, whatever it was, had to be the most insane thing that had happened in this town in a while. Definitely more exciting than giving out parking tickets and yelling at teenagers, which was mostly what he saw cops doing in Morioh.

Three days passed. That was fine. Then a week, then two, three, and eventually a month had gone by with complete radio silence. At that point Josuke started to get annoyed; even a courtesy call of ‘sorry we don’t have anything yet’ would have satisfied him, but he’d heard absolutely nothing from Keicho, nothing at all. Even on the few instances Josuke had run into him in person, he didn’t mention anything about it...and, thinking about it more, he was always weirdly quiet, and excused himself quickly. Maybe that was being paranoid, but Josuke couldn’t help it; thinking about the hand—about Reimi—had started to consume his brain space, and he felt like he could never fully distract himself from it.

The worst part was not having anyone to _talk_ to about it. He’d kept his promise and not said a word to his mom, despite how close he’d come the numerous times she’d asked him why he seemed so tired. There was Okuyasu, obviously, and they’d talked about it a few times, but talking to him about it was different. There wasn’t that relief that Josuke needed, a removal of the weight via transfer. He had to tell someone who had no idea so he could breathe out that burden, share it with another person. Talking to Okuyasu, it was like a back and forth with no conclusion, which really just kind of made things worse. Besides, they still hadn’t really talked about the experience they’d had together afterwards; looking up at the living-breathing building, seeing Reimi’s ghost of a shadow, holding hands on the walk home, which to Josuke felt somehow like just as important a part of the whole thing. It wasn’t that either of them was avoiding the topic—it just never seemed to come up naturally. Josuke didn’t want to mention it first, afraid that it would make things...well, he didn’t really know. Weird, he supposed. But the idea that anything between the two of them could possibly be _weird_ was weird too, so it was this horrible cycle churning on and on.

When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he peeled himself off of the living room couch, slipped on his shoes untied, and walked the block and a half or so to the Nijimura household, banging his fist on the door bluntly. It was Keicho who answered, looking at him for a brief second and blinking once.

“Okuyasu’s not here. He went to the Owson to get groceries—”

“D’you have anymore information about the hand?” Josuke had meant to ask it with more tact, but the question felt like it was perched on the very tip of his tongue, blasting its way through his lips and teeth.

Keicho’s face paled, seeming to shy away from Josuke as the question came out, which was freaky in some deep set, fundamental way; it was unlike Keicho to be so evasive. Josuke had been more expecting to get yelled at or something. “...It’s kinda complicated,” Keicho grumbled, moving to close the door again before Josuke spoke.

“Come on. It’s freaking me out a little. Can’t I get an update, or something?”

Again he expected to face resistance, but what came instead was a grimace as Keicho averted eye contact. It was starting to scare Josuke, now, how he was acting; it felt like a sign that something really and truly was _wrong_.

“You guys kinda found something big. I can’t say anything else—like, _legally_. Maybe one day, you know, when all of it settles down...I’ll tell you what happened. But I don’t have any idea when that’ll be. And now you _really _can’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Okay.” Some of Josuke’s determination was fading, looking at the expression on Keicho’s face—it all seemed genuine, after all. He was stressed out—there were dark circles under his eyes—if he was really just pulling Josuke’s leg, or being annoying, he wouldn’t have sounded like he felt so bad about it.

“Okay, right. So, uh, can you leave?” He narrowed his eyes at Josuke through the gap in the door, but his tone still wasn’t aggressive: closer to exasperated. “I got...I got, like, paperwork and stuff to do, man.”

“Alright...I guess I’m just curious is all.”

“I get it, yeah. I was curious about stuff like that too, which is why I wanted to do this whole internship thing. And it _is_ really interesting. But…” He lingered on the word awkwardly, struggling with his thoughts. “But, you know, sometimes it really _sucks_, too.”

Hearing Keicho say that, Josuke realized that the other boy was really only two years older than Okuyasu and himself, and certainly not more of an adult than either of them. And maybe it was worse to know more, after all, but as Keicho shut the door in Josuke’s face, and he stepped back to avoid being hit, he knew that he was not going to take this as a sign to just wait for things to progress naturally. Even if it would be worse...he was going to find out. Something happened, and he was going to find out.

—

“Working here...it wasn’t the sort of thing I’d ever seen myself doing while we were in high school. But I kinda like it. Even if I’m just, like, telling somewhere where an aisle is or whatever, I feel like I’m helping. People really like to talk about whatever it is they’re building or working on, too, which is super interesting to hear about.”

Josuke leaned back against the check-out counter of the hardware store where Koichi worked, listening idly as the other boy talked and tried to make himself look busy. Koichi’s break had technically ended twenty minutes ago, but not a single customer had come in, so Josuke had decided to take his chances until the manager came in and kicked him out again. He felt bad about how much trouble he was having paying attention to what Koichi was saying, but his now-ever-present anxiety around the hand was wriggling unavoidably in his gut, empowered by the weird interaction he’d had with Keicho. Tapping his fingers incessantly on the counter, he tried to distract himself by taking in only sensory information; the feeling of that counter on his fingertips, the display case of insect spray rigs he’d locked eyes on in front of him, and the sound of Koichi talking that faded in and out.

“When I first decided I was gonna take a gap year I thought I was gonna end up using it to travel, but, I dunno. I guess I’m not a hundred percent ready to leave Morioh yet. It would’ve been really hard on my mom, too, to suddenly not have me around. I remember how sad she was when Ayana moved out, even though she called every day—you alright, Josuke?” Koichi turned to him, frowning, and Josuke jolted a little, just then realizing how much he’d spaced out.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just...Just kinda tired, is all, I guess.” Koichi’s look of concern only deepened, and Josuke really almost told him. It would have felt so good to do it, too, but he supposed that was selfish, to want to infect Koichi with his worry. Scrambling, he tried to come up with something else to talk about, eyes wandering around the shop before landing once more on the rigs he’d been staring off at earlier. “Uh. I didn’t know you could just go into a hardware store and buy a bug spray thing like that,” Josuke mused, pointing to the display as Koichi’s eyes flicked the same direction. “They’re huge. I thought only, like, professional exterminators used those.”

“Oh, yeah, huh.” Koichi eyed the display with a somewhat amused look before explaining. “I don’t think you can just buy one normally. It’s kinda funny, actually—the guys who stock the store, they bought a whole bunch of these but thought they were way smaller than they actually are. My manager was furious! We ended up having to run this deal where if people bought one someone would come in and show them how to use it for free. So then _we_ all had to learn how to use them, too…”

“You’ve used one of these?” Josuke asked, trying to keep a laugh out of his voice. Maybe it was kind of mean, but the image of five-foot-two-Koichi hauling one of those huge-ass rigs around and trying to spray bugs was hilarious.

“Yeah. It’s not actually that hard—I think it only took me, like, half an hour to learn the basics. It’s mostly just that the rig’s really heavy...and it was super awkward having to explain stuff to people way older than me. And having to go all over people’s houses, too...made me feel really creepy, like I was looking through all their stuff.”

“Huh,” Josuke replied in a vague noise, attention returned to the rigs. Listening to Koichi talk, an idea was starting to form in his head...it was a real stupid idea, sure, but an idea nontheless, unignorable as it presented itself. As details flooded his mind, he felt himself getting worked up again on the inside—not nervously, like had been the norm, but with excitement. It would be pretty easy, after all...and if he could get Okuyasu’s help…

“Hey, Koichi, d’you think you could show me how to use it, too?”

—

Two hours later, now with a bug spray rig and pair of coveralls in the trunk of his mom’s car, Josuke was hunched over a table in the back of Tonio’s, bouncing one leg up and down at a rapid pace and looking over his shoulder at the entrance anxiously. Okuyasu came in a moment later, and rushed over as he spotted Josuke, sharing a nervous expression. Josuke hadn’t been able to articulate over the phone exactly _what_ it was that he needed to talk to Okuyasu so urgently about, only that it was _really important_ and he had to get here _as soon as possible_; he felt a little bad about that, knowing he must have stressed his friend out.

“So what’s going on, dude?” Okuyasu asked, sounding out of breath.

“I’ve been thinking about, you know, the hand. A lot. I can’t get it outta my mind.”

Okuyasu’s expression shifted from nervous to somber, and Josuke couldn’t quite decide whether that was an improvement. “Yeah. Yeah, me too, man. But we’ve already talked about that before—”

“I know. But I was thinking, and I think I could find out a whole lot of stuff if I was able to get into her apartment.”

“What?”

“_Reimi’s_ apartment,” Josuke clarified, leaning over the table and looking around to make sure the two of them couldn’t be heard. Okuyasu mirrored the action, their faces close together. “I think that if I could get into her apartment and, you know, look around...I could maybe find out what’s happening. With everything.”

Okuyasu blinked once, as if processing, before speaking in the same hushed tone Josuke had used. “You mean, like, sneak in?” Josuke nodded in affirmation, and Okuyasu leaned back briefly before returning close to Josuke with a conflicted expression. “You’re crazy, man—”

“Maybe. But I have a whole plan and everything. I need your help, though. Are you in?”

Again Okuyasu seemed conflicted, staying quiet and breaking eye contact. Josuke frowned. “Come on. Don’t you wanna at least hear the plan?”

“...Alright. I trust you, dude, but this is totally insane.”

“It’ll make more sense when I explain, trust me,” Josuke tried to reassure. “First off, I gotta find a way to jimmy a window or something so I can come back later tonight and look around for real.”

“How are you gonna do that?”

“Koichi lent me a bug-spraying rig and a pair of overalls from his job. I’m gonna tell her I’m the pest-control guy and spray her apartment, while also looking for a window I can climb through later. Then you’re gonna knock on the door, and while she’s distracted talking to you, I’m gonna get the window open.”

“What am I even gonna say to her?”

“You’re gonna be a Jehovah’s Witness.”

Okuyasu grimaced. “I don’t look like no Jehovah’s Witness, man—”

“You’re gonna do fine, trust me. I even have some of their magazines for you. And I really just need, like, thirty seconds tops. So whaddya think?”

“...I dunno,” Okuyasu answered, after a good moment of deliberation. “I mean, it’s a fun daydream. But actually _doing_ it’s too weird. It’s dangerous.”

“Let’s just try the first part, at least. It’s not like anyone would suspect us. Two random Morioh college kids—no one would think we were crazy enough to do something like this.”

“...You’ve got a point there.”

“So are you in?”

Again Okuyasu paused, thinking it over, the gears of his mind visibly churning, before nodding. “Sure. Yeah, sure! Like I said, man, I trust you. And I guess it _is_ a pretty good idea if we wanna figure out what’s going on, since no one’s gonna tell us.”

Josuke grinned wide, tempted, for a moment, to grab Okuyasu’s hands where they were close to his own, elbows on the table—as though to make that physical gesture a shorthand for this thing they shared. But he just grinned, and stood, looking down at Okuyasu.

“Then let’s go, man!”

—

They took a moment to hype themselves up, parked out front of the apartment building as Josuke awkwardly changed into the coveralls in the back of the car. The building was less imposing in the daytime, held less power; Josuke was glad for that. He was confident in his plan, but if he’d felt the same way now that he had that night, he knew he would have turned tail and left as soon as he got here.

“Okay, dude, you gotta give me at least, like, five minutes from when I enter the building. I’ll be able to stall if it’s longer, but I need time to find a window I know I’ll be able to get back into.”

“Alright, got it.” Okuyasu knelt on the passenger’s seat, looking over the headrest at Josuke as he pulled off his shirt and pants and tossed them to the floor of the car. They’d seen each other dress and undress countless times throughout their friendship—it wasn’t the sort of thing either of them would have considered weird. Josuke smiled at him, feeling at ease despite what he was about to do; he was glad to have Okuyasu here, to know he wasn’t in this alone. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to able to go through with it, if he was alone. He moved to take his hair down, working under the suspicion that the average exterminator wasn’t rocking a pompadour, and _this_ Okuyasu averted his eyes for, somehow an action more intimate. Josuke tucked his now-loose hair into a ratty baseball cap he’d found on the floor of his room, completing the look with two thumbs-up to Okuyasu.

“Okay, here I go. See you soon.”

“See you soon.” Hearing Okuyasu say it, it was like a plea more than a goodbye, and Josuke swallowed hard, looking away from him and stepping out of the car and onto the street.

He made it a point not to look up the height of the building as he approached it, lest he risk being hypnotized once more; steeling his resolve, he went right up the steps and to the door, pushing its weight open with both hands. The interior was hardly glamorous, all dark wood and peeling gray paint...it was somehow industrial and warming at the same time, in conflicting places. He made a quick dart towards the mailboxes in order to figure out her room number, catching only what little hint of SUGIMOTO R 710 he needed before he was on his way up seven flights of creaky stairs. Time was utterly of the essence here.

He was more than a little winded by the time he reached the seventh floor, the heavy rig doing him no favors. The floor held the same energies as the lobby had, wooden panelling on the walls and gray-painted pipes in an attempt to blend in; the only illumination was from single lightbulbs hanging at even intervals down the hall, creating eerie spots of yellow light along the otherwise dark hallway. Josuke shuddered, scanning the doors for 710: _I wouldn’t want to live here_. When he reached the right door, he knocked first meekly, then with slightly more force to be sure he was heard. For a moment, longer than expected, there was no answer. Josuke gulped, panic starting to rise in his throat...like an idiot, he hadn’t considered the very reasonable possibility that no one would be home. He was about to cut his losses and turn back when he heard the creak of old wood, and the rattle of a chain lock.

Reimi, the girl singer, looked at him through the small gap of the door that her chain look allowed, expression wrinkled into one of annoyance. Josuke could only really half of her face; one wide violet eye, a corner of her nose, the edge of pink lips curled with distrust...or perhaps fear, as she looked Josuke up and down before speaking in a rushed tone.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Pest control. Gotta do your apartment.” Josuke purposefully tried to keep his voice lower and more gruff-sounding, to sell the illusion that he wasn’t an eighteen year old in slightly-too-big coveralls and a bug spray rig he learned how to use that day. Reimi shut the door, then, and the failure was almost a relief; that he could go back and say _well, we tried_. The sound of the chain lock begin undone, however, changed the narrative, and the door swung open to reveal Reimi’s full form. Her shoulders were slumped slightly, but she seemed to be an average height for a girl, looking up through the difference between Josuke and herself. Her pink hair hung at the middle of her neck in a messy bob, and she was tired under her made face, noticeably older than Josuke (though not by very much). Her hands (there were two of them, which felt weird to have to think about) hung limp and uninterested at her sides, the nails painted a light pink like her hair. She was clearly home for the evening, in slippers and a thin red dress, and she wasn’t wearing a bra (which Josuke felt a little guilty about noticing). These details about her...he worked on memorizing them, as though they were of the utmost importance, as though someone was going to test him later.

“That stuff stinks,” she said bluntly, standing in the doorway and still staring Josuke down like she was trying to read his soul.

“Uh, this is new stuff—there’s no smell.”

It was a weak bluff, but it seemed to at least placate Reimi a little.“Good,” she muttered, giving him a little smile and moving aside to let him into her apartment. Her teeth were so white.

The apartment was nice, Josuke supposed, if remarkably un-lived-in-looking; despite the living room and hallway with its plush red carpet, the small kitchenette with a window (!) to look out of, the TV and record player and other amenities, it seemed more like one of those model apartments they show you to get you to buy one. Maybe it was something to do with how much empty space there was—everything seemed pushed to the very edges of the room, leaving an abyss of red carpet in the center.

“Just need to to the kitchen,” Josuke told her in his fake-pest-control-guy voice, and Reimi nodded, leaning back against the small TV gently and watching him. That was going to be a bit of a problem; she kept her eyes trained on him as he walked onto the white tile of the kitchen and began spraying. He could feel the strength of her gaze on his back, and it made him self-conscious, as though through some magic she was reading his mind and slowly figuring out exactly what he was here for. Worse, his window he’d been depending on turned out to be a no-go; when he got a moment free of Reimi’s look as she idly examined at her fingernails, he was less than pleased discover it was one of those windows that’s set into the wall and incapable of being opened. That was not good! He ducked down again to spray under the counter, gnawing at his bottom lip. There was a key there, on a ring...he could instead...maybe…?

In that moment of re-planning, there was a knock on the door, and Josuke was glad his back was turned, because he couldn’t keep a wide grin off his face. _Great fuckin’ timing, dude!_ Reimi looked up at the sound, tilting her head like a dog might before approaching it and answering the knock. Josuke looked over as well, crouched by the counter expectantly.

It was not Okuyasu who walked in. Instead, there was a dark-haired man in a grey pin-striped shirt and dress pants, maybe in his early thirties. Physically he was imposing, a little shorter than Josuke but well-muscled and serious looking. That was it mostly, the look on his face: like he meant business. Josuke forgot to look away, stunned, and the man turned to face him. Oh shit. They met eyes for a harrowing second, before the man turned towards Reimi, as if questioning. Reimi seemed to know him—shooting Josuke a look as well, she soon addressed the man, fidgeting with the hem of her dress with one manicured hand.

“Just the bug man,” she defended quietly, as if trying not to be heard, and the man looked towards Josuke once more before leaning in and whispering to Reimi. Josuke took the moment to quickly grab the key under the counter and pocket it; unseen, Reimi’s face paled, grimacing and showing off those white, white teeth.

The man left almost as soon as he came, moving silently out of the door, and Reimi wandered back to her spot in front of the TV, staring down at the carpet. Josuke stood in the center of the kitchen awkwardly, before clearing his throat and speaking.

“That should do it.”

“Yeah?” Reimi didn’t look up initially, speaking to the floor, then to her left hand, observing it much as she had before. It was only when Josuke decided it was time to book it, walking slowly to make sure the key didn’t rattle too much in his pocket, that she lifted her head to look at him. It was like she was making some call on his character, looking like that, and her expression shifted into one of a vague distrust—it freaked Josuke out a little, so he just gave a nervous smile in response and shut the door as fast as he could. Heart pounding in his chest, he took a moment in the hallway to replay everything that just happened, trying to determine whether or not he had succeeded. Before he could come to a conclusion, he laid eyes on an incredibly bewildered looking Okuyasu on the top step, gripping a stack of _Awake!_ Magazines tightly in both hands. They share a mutual look of _well, shit_ before Okuyasu spoke, stepping up to stand in the hallway with Josuke.

“You all right?”

“Yeah. What happened, dude?”

“I was just about to go for the door when that guy did my job for me,” Okuyasu explained, starting to walk quickly down the stairs again. Josuke followed close behind; it was probably a good idea to get the hell out of here now. “Did it go okay, though?”

“Uh, yes and no. You wouldn’t’ve recognized who he was, right?”

“Nope. I only really saw his back...I think he went out a door at the other end of the hall.”

“I didn’t get too good a look at him, either, yeah,” Josuke replied, playing the odd encounter over in his head with a grimace. “He sure looked at me, though. The window was a bust...but I got this key.” He fished it out of his pocket and held it up to Okyasu. “Neat, right?”

“Yeah, if it opens the door.”

“Oh, yeah, huh.” Josuke hadn’t considered that. They sat in silence with it for the rest of the walk down the stairs and out of the building, then into the car.

“Sooo...what’s next?” Okuyasu asked, finally, once Josuke was finished putting the rig back in the trunk. Josuke slid into the driver’s seat next to him, leaning on the steering wheel before speaking.

“Well—are you game for more, man?”

“Yeah,” came an answer almost immediately, and Josuke grinned eagerly, an expression that Okuyasu soon returned. “I owe you one since I goofed this one up.”

“You didn’t goof anything up,” Josuke reassured, putting an arm around Okuyasu’s shoulder reassuringly. “You still totally owe me one, though. I’ll probably try and get in tonight, maybe...would you be able to find out where she works? Like, where she sings?”

“Oh! I know that already, I think. Some club in S City...I’d have to look up the address, though.”

“Well, then...do you wanna go?”

“Huh?” It seemed to take a second to click for Okuyasu. “Like, to the club?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s Friday, so she’s probably performing...you don’t got a date or somethin’, do you?” Josuke teased, nudging his friend’s shoulder with a grin as Okuyasu’s face flushed.

“N-No! I just...I just never been to a real club like that before.”

“It’ll be fun, then. We can go and watch her sing for a bit, and then come back here and I’ll do it. Does that sound okay?”

Okuyasu considered it for a moment longer before nodding, giving Josuke a little smile. _Cute_, Josuke thought reflexively, a word out of context that was gone too fast to analyse further. “Yeah. You’re right, dude, it’ll be fun.”

Josuke returned Okuyasu’s smile, slowly growing wider and more enthusiastic. “Great! Uh, I’ll meet you outside your house at, like, eight?”

“Yeah, that sounds good—”

“Awesome. I guess you got a date with me, then,” Josuke joked, and Okuyasu laughed quietly, face still a little red.

“I guess, yeah.”

They drove off then, talking and laughing about less pressing topics. They had a few hours to kill before their next meetup, and Josuke took the time both to relax from what he’d done and prepare for what he was going to do next. He was looking forward to it: to seeing Reimi sing, to finding out more about her apartment, maybe even to finding out what was going on, and helping her if she was in danger...and to hanging out with Okuyasu more. It was going to be fun, after all, like they said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for such a long chapter sdfgfdfghgfghj


	4. Chapter 4

The Slow Club was—weird. It seemed deliberately tucked away and out of sight, down multiple winds of S City alleyways, which explained why Josuke had never seen or heard of it before tonight. When he and Okuyasu finally got inside (after getting lost more times then either might like to admit), the interior was dark, almost to the point of inhibiting sight, and slightly dingy. The only real light came from a massive neon sign, reading the club’s name, above the large stage that took up a good portion of the back of the room. That colored light filtered over everything, turning Josuke and Okuyasu blue and red and slightly sick from the weird perspective it gave. The circular tables that used the space not dominated by the stage were sparsely populated with people sipping drinks and murmuring quietly amongst themselves; Josuke and Okuyasu stood out sorely as the youngest patrons of the Slow Club that night, and struggled somewhat to navigate in that innate visibility.

There were some pretty cool things about the Slow Club too, though, like the fact that not a soul had carded them yet; not even as Josuke ordered their drinks, putting on some variation of the pest-control-voice just in case, had he been asked for ID. It took everything in him not to blow it and shoot Okuyasu a dopey grin while the bartender could still see, but he couldn’t keep it out of his face as he returned with a bottle in each hand to where his friend sat. Okuyasu had planted himself at one of the tables to keep their spot, with the latent purpose of trying to ease his still lingering nerves about the brand-new environment. Josuke didn’t mind; it gave him the opportunity to look a little cool. It wasn’t like he spent all _that_ much time in clubs, but he felt like a guy in some movie when he was able to move about the space so casually, and _especially_ when he saw Okuyasu return his grin and take one of the bottles.

“What do you think so far?” Josuke asked as he sat down, leaning in towards Okuyasu and speaking softly to create the illusion of a private conversation in a public space. Okuyasu mirrored the action before answering; after all, this was a part of their espionage, even if it was the fun part.

“Kinda weird. But cool!” He grinned wide, the expression taking up a majority of Josuke’s vision. “I wonder when she’s gonna start singing, though…”

It was a pretty good question. As of that moment, the only musical accompaniment in the Slow Club had been a light, canned sounding instrumental, gentle piano and strings wafting from aged-looking speakers mounted on the walls. As if Okuyasu had summoned her, though, what little light hung over the seating area of the Slow Club went out, leaving its audience in near-complete darkness, dark enough that Josuke had to try harder than he wanted to at putting his drink down. The music left, too, and for a harrowing moment the lot of them were suspended only in the neon-red-blue light of the sign, at its mercy. Then, in place of the music, a woman’s voice crackling over those same speakers, announcing:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Pink Lady, Miss Sugimoto Reimi.”

A polite applause broke out, which Okuyasu and Josuke contributed to as they turned away from each other’s faces and towards the stage. Reimi was already out by the time the spotlights illuminated her; first in a plain white light, then bathed in blue once the instrumental to her song came in. Seeing her like this, presented, it was strange to think of how she’d appeared to Josuke earlier that day—he suspected that for most people it was the opposite, seeing her like this, first, then later, if they were so lucky, as tired and deconstructed as she was in her home. On stage she was out of a magazine, in what Josuke supposed is what people meant by _little black dress_: black, duh, and sitting comfortably in the middle of her thighs, halter-topped and covered in sequins that caught the blue light and spat it back. Looking at her, Josuke was gripped again by the question of mutual looking, much as he’d been when he first looked at her through the window—

_Can she see me like I see her?_

Right now, though, it was a fear, not a wish. Josuke was entranced by her, and so afraid of her, irrationally, that she would recognize him in the audience, and she would _know_, and then the world would have to end.

Reimi was alone on stage; the music she was singing to came from speakers, or maybe from someone who was out of the spotlight’s range, performing unseen. Her lips parted, eyes closed, and it was less like she was singing and more like she was expelling the sound from her mouth, releasing it from deep within:

_“Any time I need to see your face I just close my eyes,_

_And I am taken to a place where your crystal mind_

_And magenta feeling take up shelter in the base of my spine_

_Sweet like a chica-cherry-cola…”_

It was a song Josuke recognized, though couldn’t immediately place; the way Reimi sang it, it was all slow and swaying, like something off those old-ass records from the 40s that Mr. Joestar made him listen to. She sang in English, each sound replaced too fast for Josuke to translate in his head, leaving only the sonic imprint of the syllables and the shiver they sent through his body. He was shivering; the room was suddenly colder than it had been. Josuke couldn’t pull his eyes away from her.

_“Oh, I want you, I don’t know if I need you, but_

_Oh, I’d die to find out_

_Oh, I want you, I don’t know if I need you, but_

_Oh, I would die to find out…”_

Josuke would not have been able to tell anyone how long the song was; in his mind it went on forever and ever, wave after wave of sound that crashed over him, welcoming. But the song did end, like it had to, and it brought with it another round of applause, now more raucous and enthusiastic. Josuke was almost too dazed to add to it, coming a second later perhaps _too_ heartfelt. He turned towards Okuyasu now, for the first time since she’d come on stage, and he was still looking at her, applauding, mouth hanging slightly open. Josuke watched him watching her, almost as intently. Okuyasu turned back as the applause faded, as the next song began, and managed only a mouthed _wow_ before the alarm on Josuke’s watch started beeping. Time to go, then; he’d tried to time out how long everything would take, to make sure he would have enough time to get back into Morioh and into Reimi’s apartment before she did. That was a good plan, in retrospect, because otherwise the two of them probably would have lost track of everything but her and her performance.

The drive back to Morioh was quiet; it was starting to get late, after all, and it wasn’t like there was all that much of a night life like in S City. Like before, this was a silent moment for Josuke and Okuyasu, not speaking to one another, just driving (or sitting in the passenger’s seat in Okuyasu’s case). Reflective. Talking about the performance, it would have been like dissecting a frog in science class; the moment would have become categorized, understood by minutiae and detail, dead. Josuke wished he could lock eyes with Okuyasu, transfer information that way, but for the sake of safety he trained his gaze on the dark Morioh scenery. 

—

They were idling outside the apartment building again, much as they had earlier that day, but something was very different...more somber, serious-like. Josuke turned off the radio like he was going to get out of the car, but left the engine running and remained firmly in his seat. He turned finally towards Okuyasu, who was already looking at him by then; Josuke had no idea how long his friend had been looking for, how long he’d been trying to make that connection. They shared the connection while sustaining their silence for a moment that seemed to drag forever, until Okuyasu spoke in a shaky voice.

“I’m gonna honk four times when I see her walk in the building. I’ll go one, two, three, four, and then you’ll know, and you can get outta there.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea...”

“And I’m gonna stay here until you come back out again, man,” Okuyasu continued, rushing his words. “No matter how long it takes. I’m gonna stay here in the car and then I’ll drive you home.” He sounded like he was about to start crying, and Josuke frowned, face flooding with concern.

“Dude, are you okay?”

“I’m just freakin’ out a little,” Okuyasu answered, bringing one hand up towards his face to wipe away the beginnings of tears. “I dunno. I’m not sayin’ we should back out, or anything, but...seeing her sing, it feels _real_ now, somehow. And if, you know, she’s involved with murder, or some kinda thing like that...who knows what you’re gonna find?”

“I’m freaked out, too,” Josuke admitted, and it was really true; he was trying to psych himself up, but this step of the plan seemed like so much more of a frontier, unknown territory. Objectively it was higher risk—if Reimi was home from work early, or worse, if that guy in the grey shirt came back...he couldn’t help but shiver a little. He was able to push those feelings aside to comfort Okuyasu as he reflected them back at that greater magnitude, and at the same time comfort himself. “But...at this point, it’s something I just gotta do. It’d be worse now, to just try and go back to normal, knowing she’s here, and maybe hurting somehow...whatever I find, I can handle it.” That confidence seemed to ease Okuyasu’s spirits, and seeing that, Josuke started to believe it. He gave an attempt at a grin, hoping Okuyasu would mirror him as he continued talking. “Besides. I should have a ton of time still. I bet I can be in and out before she even gets back.”

It took a moment, but Okuyasu eventually returned that grin, and Josuke felt like he’d just won a trophy. “Alright, man,” Okuyasu sighed, reassured. “I believe in you. If there’s anyone in this town who could pull something like this off—it’s you.”

Josuke needed to hear that, really; there was still a wriggling uncertainty within him, the very real possibility that he would go up alone to the front door of the building and chicken out, especially in the night time and confronted with those lights again. But he wasn’t alone. Not in the slightest. Even though he would be inside the apartment, and Okuyasu would be here in the car a hundred feet below on the street, they would be _in it_ together, in some metaphysical way that Josuke supposed was the way that really mattered.

Josuke pulled the key out of the engine, but didn’t move just yet. In the new, deeper quiet, he put the key in the pocket of his jeans, replacing it in his hand with the _other_ key. The cold, unfamiliar metal of it grounded him, organizing his thoughts towards what he was going to do. He pushed the door open with one hand, letting cold air rush into the car’s interior, but still stayed planted in his seat, looking up at the building in one continuous upward movement of his eyes. There were fewer lights in the windows than the last time, and Josuke humored the idea that maybe that meant the inhabitants were out for Friday night, scattered through Morioh or S City or maybe all over M Prefecture, leading individual lives that he would never know. There was still one more thing he needed, before he could go; he turned to Okuyasu, who was looking over his shoulder at the lights, and swallowed hard, thinking about how to ask.

“Dude,” he started, voice strained as Okuyasu’s eyes flicked towards him in a silent response. “Before I go up—d’you think we can hold hands again? Like the last night we were here?”

It was a weird request, and Josuke was well aware of it, but watching Okuyasu’s expression shifting as the words sunk in made him feel like the weirdest person on earth. He opened his mouth to take it back, but then Okuyasu spoke, strangely unreadable. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything about that night, man,” Josuke replied noncommittally, feeling his face start to grow hot. “I mean, if it’s weird we don’t gotta—”

“It’s not weird. Uh. If _you_ don’t think it’s weird, that is.”

“I wouldn’t’ve asked if I thought it was weird.”

“Okay.” Okuyasu looked away for a second, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth before returning eye contact with Josuke. “Okay, then, yeah, let’s do it.”

It wasn’t like before, where one of them identifiably moved first; it was more of a mutual drifting, closer and closer over the console between the driver and passenger’s seats, then gradually curling their fingers together. They didn’t look down as they did it, or away, just at each other, wondering. _Even if we weren’t already best friends_, Josuke thought to himself, _this thing we share would make it true. Maybe no one else will ever know about what we’ve seen, about what’s happened so far. Then it’ll just be us, and we’ll have to stay best friends for the rest of time._

Josuke took as long as he needed before detaching from Okuyasu, undoing his seatbelt and sliding out of the open door onto the street outside. “Thanks, man,” he muttered quietly, almost like he wasn’t trying to be heard. “See you soon.”

“See you soon,” Okuyasu repeated in that same quiet tone, eyes wide and flickering with emotion, profound but unidentifiable. “Good luck.”

Josuke nodded, like the two of them had just made a promise, and shut the door, straightening his posture and walking up to the building’s front door.

—

Josuke knocked on the door of apartment 710 first, hitting it sharply with his knuckles three times before quickly darting to the end of the hall. _Just to make sure_. It seemed unlikely that she would have finished her act and made it all the way back here—unseen by either of them—but he wanted to be really, truly, one hundred percent sure. If he fucked this up, it would be _way_ worse than if he had fucked up his pest-control act. He waited perched against the wall like a nervous, long legged bird, until perhaps predictably there was no response. Looking around to make sure he was alone in the hall, he slowly made his way back to the door, gripping the key in his hand tightly. This was the second place where something could go wrong; sucking in an uneven breath, he jammed the key into the lock a little less than gracefully. He held that breath as it stuck, refusing to go further than halfway...then released it as the key gave in and clicked into place with a wriggle and tug of encouragement from Josuke. 

The apartment was dark, but Josuke didn’t dare turn the light on—it seemed like the sort of thing that would be too easy to forget about by the time he was done, the sort of thing that would get a stupid character in a movie caught. Blinking and giving his eyes a moment to adjust, he promptly started on mission _learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time_. There was no real method or plan to it—he simply tried to look at everything and anything he hadn’t noticed before. He didn’t bother with the kitchen or living room at the moment, seeing as he’d already been there; he moved urgently down the hall, flinging open the first door his hands met. A bedroom—brushing away the (perhaps hypocritical) awkwardness he felt, he went inside, eyes darting back and forth almost fast enough to give him a headache. It was a clean and organized room, mature in its simplicity, with little inside save for a wardrobe, nightstand and queen-sized bed. It was hard to tell with the lack of light, but the color scheme seemed similar to what he’d seen of the living room earlier, reds and dark wood. Of interest was a framed photograph on the nightstand, and Josuke picked it up and held it close to his face, trying to discern what detail he could. It was a family portrait, a mother and father smiling serenely as their young daughter grinned in the foreground. In her arms she held a little puppy, visibly excited and squirming even in the still image. _Ok, cute_. Josuke couldn’t help but smile back at the faces there, before gently putting the picture down in his best approximation of where it had been.

Onto the next door, a little further down the hall and on the other side, which was—weirdly enough—another bedroom. This one seemed more lived in, and like it belonged to a younger person; there were band posters on the wall, stuffed animals on the twin bed, assorted lipsticks and mascaras scattered on the counter of the vanity mirror. It looked a little like Koichi’s sister’s room, if he had to assign a preexisting memory to it: the room of a teen girl. Was this where Reimi slept, then? That made the most sense...but then who slept in the other room? And on the odd chance the other room was Reimi’s, who the _fuck_ slept here?? 

There was a dog bed in this room, which Josuke didn’t notice until he accidentally stepped on it, bristling with a sudden shock of fear that then faded into a deep confusion. He hadn’t even considered there might be a dog here—but if he hadn’t seen it at this point, it was either nonexistent or a _really_ shitty guard dog. Dropping to the floor, he tried to feel out with his hands how big the bed was, to get a sense of the size of a dog that would sleep in it...a pretty _big_ dog, he eventually concluded. _How weird_, he thought, and the puppy in the photograph he’d seen came to mind. 

Right before he got up, he caught a glimpse of something silver and circular underneath the frame of the bed, recognizing its shape immediately. He couldn’t help himself—crawling awkwardly on his hands and knees, he grabbed for the CD player and its attached headphones. What kind of music did someone like Reimi listen to? He popped it open to get a quick look at the disc itself: no band name, but hot pink, with a green outline vaguely in the shape of a girl’s face. Grinning to himself, he slipped on the headphones, pressing play with his thumb. It wasn’t anything he recognized—abrasive English vocals, heavy guitar, the occasional record scratch or other electronic sound—weird, but he was kind of into it. And god, the quality of her headphones was _really_ good. Good enough to totally pull him out of the room, to block out the buzz of the air conditioner, the sound of his fingers tapping on the bedframe...and the sound of a car horn on the street below, going _one two three four_.

He was able to un-distract himself as the song ended, shoving the CD player back under the bed and standing with a creak of his joints. That was enough for this room, he supposed, heading back into the living room and standing idly as he thought about where to look next. He didn’t get any chance to, though—not as he heard the sound of the doorknob being turned, and heard a woman’s voice outside in the hall—

“Thank you, Shinobu. See you tomorrow. Goodnight.”

_Shit! Fuck! SHIT!!!_

There was a closet on the other side of the living room—there was no time to do anything else—Josuke ran to it both as quickly and as quietly as he could manage, shutting the door in front of himself just as the light in the living room turned on and Reimi stepped into her apartment.

He pressed himself flush against the closet’s back wall, breathing rapidly and painfully aware of his heart beating. He couldn’t even think like this; it took a long moment of just breathing there, trying to calm down, before he started to think about his next move. The door of the closet was slatted, allowing a small amount of light to filter in, and, Josuke soon realized, a small amount of space through which he could look out. Leaning forward cautiously, he brought his eye right up to the slats, giving him a surprisingly good view of Reimi in the living room. If he somehow hadn’t been being creepy before, this _definitely_ had crossed that line now—but it wasn’t like there was much else he could do. 

Reimi seemed exhausted; after tossing her purse down onto the floor and slipping off her uncomfortable-looking heels, she slumped down onto the living room’s loveseat and stayed still for a moment, running her hands through her hair with her eyes closed. Then, she stood, pulling her dress with her over her head and leaving her in a pair of red, lacy underwear. Josuke felt himself blushing, and looked away, only for a moment—because then she started walking towards the closet, leaving him with nothing to do but curl as small as he could against the closet’s corner and hope that whatever happened to him wouldn’t be too bad.

He was saved, miraculously, by the sound of a phone ringing on a small table beside the loveseat Reimi had just been perched upon. She stopped dead in her tracks, hand retreating from where it had been poised to pull open the closet door, and turned straight around in a beeline for the phone. Josuke took the opportunity both to start breathing again and to move closer to the slats once more for a better view. He had the feeling he was about to learn a _lot_.

“Hello?” Reimi asked, but she seemed to already know who was calling from the tense look on her face, and how quickly she started speaking afterwards. “Yes, sir. Kira?” 

A name—it was important on some base level, held some sort of energy, and Josuke shuddered as he heard it, making sure he would remember...or maybe just _knowing_ that he would remember whether he liked it or not. Reimi paused for a moment, listening to the other side, before screwing her face up in an odd look of emotional distress. “Kira, let me talk to them. Please, Kira—sir.” There was another pause, then, longer than the other, and again Reimi’s face seemed to shift and distort, now into what was approaching an ironic smile. “I _like_ to sing I Want You,” she answered cryptically, which perhaps pleased the unseen Kira—another pause, and Reimi gasped, now speaking in an ecstatic, hurried voice, clearly to someone else.

“Mom? Dad?” she began, a now genuine grin spreading across her face. “Mom, Dad, it’s alright, don’t worry. Can you hear me?” She listened intently to the other line, eyes wide, and leaned back against the wall where she was still standing up. “Is Arnold alright? Is he there with you?”

There was another pause, but it was populated by Reimi’s expression, shifting agonizingly into a vague confusion, then fear. “What do you mean—” she started, but was interrupted by her own panic as it rushed in hard and fast. “Kira! Kira, what’s the matter with Arnold?” she cried out. “You said you’d leave him alone if I—”

And then she cut herself off again, holding the receiver close to her ear, and simply let an almost inaudible “oh” fall from her mouth as she listened. She slid down to land heavily on the loveseat, the phone’s cord dragging in a diagonal line across her body, and out of every horrible thing that seemed to have just happened in quick succession Josuke thought this had to be the worst: to watch that little spark of protest in her voice get so easily snuffed out, and replaced by her now numb and doll-like resignation. She swallowed before speaking, and even from a distance Josuke thought he could trace the motion down the line of her thin neck.

“I know. I’ll be sweet. I’m sorry...Okay, Kira...sir.”

Her voice was meek, frightened, and even though she was older than him Josuke would have believed it in that moment if someone had told her she was actually a kid from one of the high schools. Just from her voice. The voice that he had now heard spoken, heard sung, and heard like this, and wished he could unhear.

Josuke was fucking _scared_. He’d never experienced something like this before—even as it was happening it didn’t feel real, like he was watching something play out in a movie. He’d come here to find out more information about her, sure, but now it was as if he’d learned too much..._way_ too much, and he could never take it back. Even just hearing Reimi’s one side of the conversation, his intrusion seemed so primal and unforgivable, and guilt burnt up hot in his chest as he watched her put the receiver down with a sigh. Right, that too—there was still the problem of his being stuck in her closet, with no conceivable mode through which he could exit unseen. Would he have to stay here until she went to bed? The thought was unappealing; his legs were already starting to ache from the half-crouch he had been doing this whole time. Not as unappealing, however, as whatever was going to happen when she opened this closet up and found him...he remained barely pressed against the slats of the door, continuing to watch her even though he sort of didn’t want to anymore. This was no longer cool or exciting—it was just fucked up. Rationally he told himself he had to keep watching so he could know where she was, and at least not get surprised if she so happened to open the closet door...but he knew there was something more to it, deep down. A sort of fatalism, maybe, that now he was too far gone to pussy out, and had to see this through—whatever _this_ was—to the bitter end.

The first thing Reimi did after the call was start crying. It wasn’t the loud, over-the-top kind of crying Josuke was used to from Okuyasu or his mom; it was contained and almost silent, like she was trying to hide it, even though (as far as she knew) she was alone in the room. She seemed to sob instead with the muscles of her face, contorting in heaves as tears tracked soundlessly down her cheeks. Slowly, she half-moved, half-slipped off on the loveseat and onto the carpet, crying there instead in a crumpled pile of a human form. She stayed that way for as long as it took, to work the phone call out—Josuke felt the corners of his own eyes start to burn, seeing someone in pain like that. He quickly brought both hands to his eyes to push away impending tears; he wasn’t all that quiet a crier himself.

She stopped crying after what felt like an entire lifetime cramped in the closet, and lay on the living room for a moment longer, staring up at the ceiling. Then she pushed herself onto her elbows with no small amount of effort, rubbing at her eyes before standing and walking briskly down the hall. She surpassed both bedrooms and pulled open the door to a small bathroom that Josuke hadn’t seen in his prior investigation, and couldn’t see very much of now. Some potted plants, vaguely yellow tile under an ugly fluorescent light, and oh, yeah, Reimi with her back to him unhooking her bra and pulling her panties off. She’d left the bathroom door open; after all (as far as she knew), she was alone in the room. Josuke gulped, feeling his cheeks start to get hot with both embarrassment and something _else_ that it was a _totally_ inappropriate time to be feeling. He shut his eyes for the first time that night as she turned around to pull a plush pink bathrobe off of a hook on the back of the bathroom door, feeling like the creepiest guy on the planet.

When he looked again, she was standing in the middle of the empty living room space, and something was wrong. Her posture stiffened, and she shivered slightly, as if a chill had gone through the room...or as if she had just sensed something she hadn’t before. Her eyes narrowed, taking in the sight of her own home as if there was now something foreign and unwanted about it. She moved slowly, stalkingly, circling the living room, breathing heavily under the bathrobe as she flicked her steeled gaze over towards the closet door...and made eye contact with Josuke through the slats.

He was expecting her to scream, so reflexively he clapped his hands over his ears and backed away from the door—this accomplished little but causing him to thump audibly against the back wall, confirming his presence there if she hadn’t been sure already. She didn’t scream, though; her face seemed to fill to the brim with a sort of primal fear, and then she walked away from the closet, just as slowly and deliberately as she had approached it. Josuke didn’t see where she went, covering his eyes and cowering in the back of the closet as if to create the impression that he hadn’t seen anything at all. He stayed like that, blind and confused, for what seemed like far too long, before he heard the door of the closet fly open with an unhappy rattling of wood. Reimi stood in front of him, then, a sizeable kitchen knife gripped in one fist, staring him down with the most potent and undeterminable cocktail of emotions Josuke had ever seen.

“Get out of there! Come on! Come out here where I can see you!”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Josuke Higashikata: Regretful Investigator
> 
> WARNING IN THIS CHAPTER FOR:  
\- implied rape/non-con  
\- mild sexual content + mild dubious consent

“Out! Out! And put your hands on your head!”

Josuke hardly even had time to fully understand what Reimi was telling him to do before he did it, stumbling out of the closet and blinking uncomfortably as he adjusted to the bright light in the living room. He dropped to his knees, too, for good measure; anything to communicate how little harm he meant, and how sorry he was. Mentally scared as he felt, he was now noticing how hard at fast his heart was beating—right in his ears, so intense he was afraid it would up and stop any second. The fear had transcended his mind and flooded his physical body, and that was somehow even more terrifying than the actual situation, that he was completely controlled by his fear on such a fundamental level. He couldn’t move, could hardly think; he just looked up at her from where he knelt on the carpet, looking up at her and gnawing anxiously on his bottom lip.

But Reimi was scared, too. The hand that held the kitchen knife above him was shaking violently, the blade wiggling back and forth and catching the light of the room in irregular, nervous spurts; it seemed more like she was seconds away from dropping it on him rather than stabbing him. She cowered like him, too, though less obviously, rocked back on her heels with bent posture, getting away rather than coming near. And her eyes—angry, sure, but above all big and confused, frightened.

“Who are you? What’s your name?” Reimi demanded, voice high and quivering.

“Josuke.”

“Josuke _what?_”

“Josuke nothin’,” he murmured, hesitant about how much identifying information he should give out in a situation like this, which Reimi seemed displeased about, angling the blade of the kitchen knife towards his face.

“Gimme your wallet,” she said bluntly, stabbing through the air and coming _far_ too close to grazing the flesh of Josuke’s cheek. “I said gimme your wallet!”

He didn’t have to be asked twice. He quickly dug in the inner pocket of his jacket, pulling his wallet out and handing it to her. It was almost a relief, which was probably a weird way to feel about getting robbed, but at least this way she would probably let him go sooner rather than later. If Reimi was interested in the fifteen dollars or so he had in his wallet, however, she didn’t show it; she flipped open instead to where his student ID sat nestled in its plastic compartment, peering over it intently.

“Higashikata Josuke,” she read, before folding the wallet back up and tossing it on the ground in Josuke’s general direction. “What are you doing in my apartment, Higashikata Josuke?”

He blinked once at the question, realizing he didn’t really have all that good of an answer. “I just wanted to see,” he eventually came up with, lame as it was, and Reimi scoffed.

“Are you kidding? Who sent you?”

“Nobody. I swear…!”

Reimi lowered the knife, but brought her face closer to Josuke, looking him up and down. There was little he could do but let her look, shivering slightly, until she spoke, eyes narrowing. “I saw you before.”

“I sprayed your apartment earlier today,” Josuke confessed. “I took your key. I didn’t mean to do anything except see. I’m really sorry.”

Reimi’s confusion was fading, replaced on her expression by a vague disgust—Josuke felt his cheeks go red, and he looked down at the carpet rather than meet her eye. She took a moment, just looking at him, before replying. “What did you see, huh?”

Josuke looked up now, biting his lip once again and staying quiet. He didn’t really want to say—between the phone call and seeing her in the bathroom, there really wasn’t a single redeemable intrusion he’d committed that night. Reimi was insistent, though, snapping at him with a frown on her face. “Tell me!” He saw her fingers curl tighter on the knife’s handle, which was just the convincing he needed.

“I, uh, saw you come in…” he began, watching her face carefully and trying to figure out the least damning way he was going to phrase all of this. “And I saw you talking on the phone.”

There was a flicker of something in Reimi’s eye; pain, maybe, or embarrassment. She bit her bottom lip as she looked at Josuke, the same way he did when he was scared, and they were familiar, for a moment. _Something important happened, and I was there, even though I don’t know her at all._ Her eyes fluttered shut for a second, brushing away that awkward familiarity, and when she spoke again her voice was softer, thoughtful—though still distrusting. “And then?”

Well, now Josuke didn’t really want to say what _and then_ was. He could tell she already knew from the way she was looking at him; eyes narrow with disgust, but expectant. She wanted to hear him say it. He was glad he could only feel how red his face was, and not see it...he didn’t think he had ever been this embarrassed in his life. “Uh, then you got undressed.”

“So, what, you sneak into girl’s apartments to see them get undressed?”

“N-Not usually!” Josuke grimaced. “I mean—I’ve never done something like this before now. Ever. Look, I really am sorry—so if you could just let me leave and—”

“No way.” Reimi shook her head and gripped at the knife again, holding it up; Josuke had almost forgotten about it. “Get undressed. You saw me, so it’s only fair if I see you, too.”

“Huh?”

“Get undressed!” She repeated, punctuated with another jolt forward of the knife. Nervously, Josuke shucked off his jacket, then pulled his t-shirt over his head, being careful not to mess up his hair. He looked up at Reimi as he did all this, making direct eye contact as sat down on the floor and kicked off his pants, trying to get a sense of her feelings. If he could manage that, then maybe he would get a sense of what the fuck was going on. But, for now, her face was menacing in how unreadable it was, in how little she betrayed about how she was feeling. She simply moved the knife back and forth in front of his face, idly, and he kept biting his lower lip.

He stopped when he was in nothing but his boxer shorts, shivering on the floor, and raised an eyebrow at Reimi. The knife was right between his eyes now, and he was getting dizzy trying to keep it in his line of sight...but she sighed, and let it drop with her hand back to her side. 

“Okay, you can stand up.”

He did so with a small nod, pushing himself onto his feet from the carpet with both hands. They were face to face as equals, now, with about three feet of empty red carpet between them; Josuke looked up at the ceiling, tracing the popcorn kernel texture of it, and Reimi looked at him. He could _feel _her eyes on him, all over and everywhere, tracing his chest and arms and his nervous, shaking hands, but he didn’t meet her eye even once as she did so. He supposed it _was_ fair, in a way; he’d looked at her tons before this, after all, without her looking back. That didn’t make it any less weird to be standing in a random apartment in his underwear getting ogled by a pretty girl, though. He wished there was someway he could read her thoughts, peer inside her brain and understood what she thought...what she thought about _him_.

After a moment of her silent looking, Josuke heard a solid _thump _from the ground below; the sound of Reimi getting onto her knees on the carpet, reversing their previous positions. “Come closer,” she said quietly, voice soft and reflective. Josuke hesitantly obliged, taking a step towards her and beginning to close the gap that was between them. This was closer up than he’d seen her before, ever before; he could make out the grain of foundation on her face, the wrinkles on her lips, the dark circles under her eyes. She looked like a person from here, a real person, not a silhouette or a singer on stage, and it was intimidating how real she was.

“Closer.”

Another step forward. Josuke could feel how much he was sweating.

Remi kept looking up at him from where she was on the ground now, and Josuke only grew more and more nervous. They were too close now, for having just met, and with her on her knees her face was _right there_, like in one of those dirty magazines he and Okuyasu would steal from Keicho back in high school...he tried not to think about that, but it was getting harder and_ harder_ to keep the association out of his mind (_no double entendre intended, _he repeated to himself to make it true). He craned his neck down to try and meet her eye, ask that way what she planned to do, but the second they made contact she frowned and held the knife up near his stomach aggressively.

“Don’t look at me!” She hissed. “Don’t look at me or I’ll hurt you!” Josuke recoiled from the blade and obliged, again fixing his gaze on the popcorn kernel ceiling. 

“Okay.”

“Do you like talk like that?”

“No.” His voice was quiet, bottom lip quivering. He was freaking out again, heart hammering in his chest, but also kind of starting to get turned on, even though he _really_ wished he wasn’t. He’d kissed girls and stuff before, obviously, but still he’d never, you know. _Done It_. When he thought about what it would be like the first time, with a girl, he knew he didn’t want it to be like this, in this creepy apartment with someone he’d just met while she was kinda sorta threatening him at knife point. 

Still holding the knife in one hand, Reimi brought the other up slowly and put it on Josuke’s hip, right above the waistband of his boxers. He flinched, not anticipating the sudden touch; he was, after all, not looking at her. Her hand was unfamiliar and intrusive, and at the same time soft and warm—_really nice_. That conflicting fear and arousal was grappling with itself still in the pit of his stomach, hot and panicked. 

“How about that? Do you like that?”

“Uh—yeah.” He gulped, a lump of some conflicted emotions passing its way brutally down his throat.

Reimi seemed to contemplate this, making no further move—but also not moving her hand from his hip, which Josuke was sort of waiting for her to do. It _felt_ way too much, dizzying. He quickly darted his gaze down for the fraction of a second he felt like he could get away with; the hand holding the knife hand gone limp again, which was probably a good sign. When she spoke again, her voice was soft, _cute_, and out of context it almost sounded like she really _was_ about to, well. You know.

“What do you want, Josuke?” The way she said his name made him feel all kinds of ways, his guts twisting and flipping over themselves as each syllable fell off of her tongue.

“I dunno,” he confessed, and it was probably the most honest thing he had said the whole night. Reimi’s hand moved ever so slightly down on his hip, her thumb hooking into the top of his boxers, and his breath caught in his chest, screwing his eyes up tight in both dread and anticipation...until someone knocked at the door, harshly, louder than Josuke thought a door could possibly be. 

Remi’s reaction was sudden, and sharp. She immediately dropped what she was doing—whatever the _fuck_ it was that she had been doing—and got back to her feet, curling her long nails painfully into Josuke’s skin as she used him to haul herself upwards. Her eyes sought him, and Josuke met them worriedly, assuming he was allowed to look now, now that circumstances had clearly changed. He was still more dazed and confused than he had ever been in his life, but the more time he spent navigating this weird-ass situation, the better he was getting at reading clues, like the clue that this was _not good_. Reimi had looked scared before, but that was a joke compared to her expression now; Josuke half-expected her hair to turn white, like in a cartoon. They were paralyzed, together, Josuke out of not knowing who it was and Reimi perhaps for the opposite reason. Whoever was at the door knocked again, contained but urgent, and then Reimi was pushing Josuke back towards the closet as he stumbled in the same direction and tried not to trip over himself.

“Don’t say anything—just hide in here until he’s gone. You have to be totally silent or you are going to _die_,” she muttered through gritted teeth, kicking Josuke’s clothes into the closet along with him as he leaned flush against its back wall. A third knock—Reimi looked over her shoulder at the door, then at the kitchen knife that was still in her hand. She handed it to Josuke unexpectedly, and on instinct his hand curled around the hilt of it tightly as Reimi shut the closet door in his face and went to let her guest in.

Josuke’s chest rose and fell heavily in what was now the sanctuary of the closet, dark and oddly safe. He tried to make sense of everything that had just happened, organize it to some meaningful timeline, but it seemed fragmented even now, moments later; flashes of sensation, like her touching him, like her voice, like the knife he was now gripping at his side like it was a talisman. The cold flat of the blade brushed against his thigh, and he jolted like he was being woken up.

_Okay. Okay, alright. So what the hell do I do now?_

He considered trying to redress himself, but decided against it—it would be too awkward to try and fumble with everything in the closet’s limited space and light, and he fully intended to heed Reimi’s frantic warning. _You have to be totally silent or you are going to die_. In his mind there was no possible room for hyperbole—everything here was true and real, Josuke thought nonsensically, _had_ to be true and real or else nothing was. Who, then, would come through that door, pose such a threat? Body moving on its own volition, he leaned up against the slats to find out.

Josuke had never really bought the idea that you could tell that somebody was evil. Whenever he watched movies or read comics, he’d get annoyed by things like that; it seemed like it was way scarier and exciting if you didn’t know, and were tricked. He changed his tune in a heartbeat as he saw the man walk into the room—completely silent, his dress shoes muffled entirely by the thick carpet of the living room. Dress shoes. Brown dress shoes, purple suit, adult, maybe thirty, blonde hair, a tie, completely silent—Josuke ran these things through his mind until they felt like they were tucked deep inside the folds of his brain. Anything to distract from that gut wrenching _evil_ that the man seemed to evoke, corny as it felt to phrase it like that. _Remember, remember, remember_, he chanted in his mind, feeling cold sweat start to drip down his back. Here in the closet, Josuke couldn’t do anything useful but remember—to pick him out in a lineup, maybe, or see him on the street in the daytime and call the police—or even just to tell Okuyasu later, to recount this _hell_ of a story as accurately as possible—

“Took you long enough,” the man mumbled, making a beeline into the center of the living room as Reimi remained behind and closed the door. He seemed comfortable here, taking up the space freely; Reimi, on the other hand, walked slowly and at an odd cadence behind him, like she were approaching a large and unfamiliar dog. There was a smile on her face, but it strained too heavily in the corners, marring her expression.

“Hello, Kira,” she said, though he was turned away from her, and of course this was Kira. Who else could it have been, other than that voice that had ripped that crying out of Reimi just before? That was now ripping this smile onto her?

Kira looked back at her first over his shoulder, then pivoted on the heel of one of those dress shoes, facing Reimi head on and pushing his shoulders back with a barely audible crackling of stiff joints. Physically, the difference in height between them was less than that between her and Josuke, but he imposed so much more in the room, as though everything were getting angled towards and below where he stood. “Hello, Reimi,” he returned, after a quiet moment of simply staring down at her. Josuke thought he saw her shiver. 

“It’s late,” Reimi said in a paced, hesitating voice, as if _she_ were the one who had just arrived and was apologizing for the time. “Isn’t it?” Kira’s eyes flicked towards a clock on the wall, the action prompting Josuke to look at his own watch—10:30 PM. Which was weird: he’d been certain it had to be _way_ later, if only because of how off-kilter and dreamlike everything felt. Dreamlike, yeah, that was a good word for this, but not _day_dream-like; like a real asleep dream, where things shifted and faded and people said weird things you could never understand.

“Yes.” The single syllable fell from Kira’s mouth in a musing tone, as though he’d really thought about it. He took a few steps towards her, business like, putting Josuke as on-edge as the action made Reimi look. “I won’t take long. Besides—” Close to her now, too close, his hands went up towards her head, hovering in the anticipation of touch before planting firmly on either side of her face and threading obtrusive fingers into her hair. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Turn off the light.”

Released, Reimi walked swiftly and silently towards the entryway of her apartment, reaching out one hand to flip the lightswitch in a fluid motion. She kept her head down as she did it, seeming to watch only her bare feet as they padded across the thick carpet...but Josuke thought that, for a split second, she had looked over at the closet, trying to communicate something through the distance and through the slats. With the main light out, the room was filled instead with the too-warm glow of a single lamp resting in a far corner, exaggerating shadows and bathing everything in a sort of sunset golden hue. In that new lighting, Kira seemed even more imposing, and Reimi even smaller and more cowering. Josuke squinted first in an attempt to see, then opted to press himself closer against the slats, one hand against the door to keep control over it. _Risky_, piped up some scared thought, but Josuke was engrossed, as unfortunate a word the descriptor was. His own body and mind seemed to be fading into the background of whatever was unfolding in front of him, like he was watching a movie.

“Now it’s dark,” Kira commented, receiving no response from Reimi where she still stood near the light switch. She returned to the other side of the room, slowly as she had before when he first came in, but less fearful seeming, and more hesitant—preparing. The only cue about how she might be feeling was in her walk, and in the way she was breathing, heavy and even paced. Her face was stony, unreadable, even accounting for the dark and the distance from which Josuke was looking at her; there was nothing identifiable there. Once in front of Kira, she made eye contact with him for a brief moment, sucking in a sharp breath, then released it and screwed her eyes shut tight, extending her right hand limp at the wrist in his direction.

Kira reacted immediately, pulling his gaze away from where it had been tracking Reimi’s movements and directing his attention to the hand she had presented. He grabbed at her arm eagerly, one of his own hands in a vice grip at her forearm while the other caressed her knuckles and felt up her thin fingers. Shuddering, he pulled Reimi forward by her arm, causing her to stumble slightly as he rubbed her hand fervently against his cheek, over his lips. He groaned in a sound that made bile rise in Josuke’s throat before finally sliding three of her fingers into his mouth.

_What the fuck is he doing???_

Josuke was disgusted, but couldn’t manage to pull his eyes away from what was happening—it was like when people can’t help but slow down on the highway to look at a car crash, he supposed. He kept watching, intently, despite the fact that he didn’t want to.

Kira’s knees began to shake as he slobbered over Reimi’s fingers, eyes open in a perverse expression. Even from such a distance as he was at, Josuke could see how tightly he was gripping her arm, fingernails digging into her skin. It must have been painful. But Reimi didn’t react—just kept her eyes shut tight, holding her place in silence. All that betrayed the fear she must have been feeling was the slight shiver in her body, the uneven rise and fall of her chest underneath the bathrobe, and the tear tracks running down her face near invisible in the dark room.

Kira gave a sudden, strangled moan as Reimi’s fingers seemed to hit the back of his throat, causing him to choke slightly. This caused her to open her eyes reflexively, meeting Kira’s for a split second—before his expression contorted with anger and he slapped her sharply across the face. “Don’t look at me!” he spat, mouth free as Reimi recoiled from the strike and lost her balance, stumbling back onto the loveseat. “Don’t _look_ at me!” Reimi’s mouth opened loosely from where she was now half-sitting, half-slumped on the cushions, but it didn’t seem like she was trying to say anything. Instead she was vacant and reeling, a fish on land. Kira took advantage of this lapse, pushing her down against the loveseat, crawling on top of her, yanking the tie from the robe and balling it up and shoving it into her mouth. Again grabbing her hand as she muffled out a weak fear. Unsupported, the bathrobe fell open, exposing, and then, _only then_, did Josuke’s brain seem to catch up to his eyes and send him, all at once, the signal: _OKAY OKAY OKAY STOP LOOKING!! STOP LOOKING RIGHT NOW!!!_

There was no way to completely block out any sensory information. He was able to shut his eyes, so tight he saw dizzying spots of meaningless color behind them, and he could clamp a single cold hand over a single ear, but it wasn’t nearly enough. In a way it was worse: only hearing what was happening, what Kira was doing to her, and having his brain fill in the visual against his will. It didn’t occur to him for a second to let go of the knife, still grasped tightly in one fist despite the sweating of his palms; even beyond the revealing noise such an action would have made, it would have been an acknowledgement that things were hopeless, that there was no force that could stop what had been put into motion.

The knife was in his hand. He had a weapon—Kira did not—if he could just manage to move fast enough, quietly enough, to not be seen until he’d landed a blow—if in the real world someone had presented him with this scenario, as an interesting what-if, that’s probably what he would have said he would do. Just, you know, kill him. It’s easy enough to think that you’d be able to do something like that, for someone who was being hurt the way Reimi was, someone who needed help that badly. Josuke _needed_ to help her—his whole body felt like it was burning up and vibrating with that need, angry and sad and desperate as it all was. But at the same time, he was frozen, stuck glued to the closet floor with those emotions and that need whirling and tearing up his guts. All he could manage to do was let tears fall down his face angrily, sadly, desperately. He felt like a little kid.

When the two of them woke up from their shared nightmare, and Josuke opened his eyes, Reimi was lying alone on the loveseat, boneless. Kira redressed himself, a distance away from her, efficient and business like. He walked briskly towards the door, reaching out to open it, before turning to face Reimi with some terrible distortion of what a smile should be. “Stay alive, Reimi,” he instructed coolly, one corner of that bad smile curling slightly higher. Cruel. “Do it for Kirchner.”

That cryptic comment was all he left of his presence, seeing himself out without any more fuss. Before walking out, Kira flicked the light switch, again filling the room with the bright white light that had covered it before he came, as though to reset the room to how it had been then. Josuke still didn’t move, not until he saw Reimi reach up and unfurl the bathrobe tie from her mouth and drop it on the ground with a small cough. She had to move first, as the true indication that it was over. Once she started moving he was immediately in action, flinging the closet door open and picking up his clothes as he went along, haphazardly re-dressed by the time he made it to her. 

“Are you all right?” he asked, stupid as it felt; he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Reimi blinked, raised only her head and looked at him as though trying to determine whether or not he was really there. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright,” she replied noncommittally, voice muffled as she turned her back to Josuke and pressed her face into the cushion of the loveseat. Josuke’s heart ached for her, suddenly, painfully, like a fist was gripping around it. 

“Do you wanna stand up? I’ll help you.”

“Yeah.”

Reimi propped herself up on her elbows, and Josuke stooped down to meet her and allow her to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “Okay, three, two, one,” he guided, standing the both of them up by unbending his knees and hoisting her gently with his hands on her sides. Her legs shook violently, and Josuke held her steady, letting her body flush its system out in that way. Her fingers curled tightly against his back, and stayed that way even once she seemed to relax and be able to stand on her own. They met eyes for the first time since, and all at once Reimi seemed to be overwhelmed, beginning to sob. _Really_ sob, like she did when she didn’t know he was looking at her, unravel that same way.

“I’m scared.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Help me.” She pulled him against her, hugging him tightly. He returned the action on instinct, rubbing small circles on her back as she cried into his shoulder. “Please help me. You know now. You’re the only person who knows.”

“I’ll help you,” he replied almost immediately, beginning to weep again himself and re-wetting the drying tear tracks on his face.”I swear—I’m gonna help you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear, genuine and desperate, still hugging onto him. “You’re my hero, Josuke.”

Logically, he knew that probably didn’t mean much of anything—a cliche, she wasn’t in her right mind, a whole other host of negations and reality-checks—but in that moment it was all true, that he was her hero, and he was going to rescue her from the hell he’d just learned she was living in. It wasn’t a positive feeling: he was scared out his fucking mind, too, maybe just as much as she was. 

They were quiet for a long time, hugging, Reimi crying in soft, uneven bursts and Josuke trying to process everything he’d seen. He tried to ground himself, focusing on sensation alone—the give of the carpet under his shoes, the fabric of the bathrobe under his hands on Reimi’s back, her bare skin against his thin t-shirt, her breathing against his neck—then, her lips against his neck, for some reason—

“What are you doing—?”

“Do you like me?” Her voice was soft, recovering from tears, but shifting back into that voice she’d used on him before all of this happened—he was starting to get confused again like he had been too, biting his lip.

“Yes.”

“Do you like how I feel?” 

Suddenly his hand was being moved, by her, to where the bathrobe was still open and exposing, landing square on one of her breasts. Josuke panicked.

“I gotta—I gotta go now,” he rushed out, squirming out of their hug—which seemed to have grown tighter and closer without his realizing—and heading for the door without looking back. He broke that promise to himself, though, turning his head back with one hand on the knob. It was a mistake; Reimi’s face looked so vulnerable, almost betrayed, that he had to turn right back around to not go running over there again. “I’ll come back later,” he said to the wood of the door, opening it up and stepping into the hall.”

“Promise?” Her voice floated to him, mouth unseen, and he didn’t get a chance to answer—already moving into the hallway, walking, then running down the stairs and back into the lobby. He couldn’t _not_ run, even though he knew he must be making so much noise on the buildings creaky staircase; it was the only way to let his body understand what it had just seen, just learned. The run was exhausting under the weight of all of that, dragging him down, making his breath come ragged and cold in his throat. Right, he was being weighed down, by the horrible thing he’d just witnessed, by the responsibility he now had, by the fear of what was going to come next. There was no room in his head for his own thoughts as he ran. There were only the scattered echoes of the sights, of the sounds, of Reimi’s words, pounding against his skull over and over again: _YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON WHO KNOWS._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO SORRY for how long this took!! college is kicking my ass a little and this chapter was uh. hard to write  
the next chapter is going to be WAY lighter though i promise


	6. Chapter 6

Gasping as he felt the night’s cold air hit his tear-stained face, Josuke was suddenly overcome by the irrational fear that he had taken way too long—that Okuyasu would have grown bored and driven home, and then he would be all alone. But the car was still parked on the other side of the street, unmoving under the yellow glow of a street lamp, and Okuyasu was looking out the window from the driver’s side, brow furrowing with concern as the two of them made eye contact. Josuke mustered up what felt like the very last of his strength to stumble across the empty street and pull the car door open, collapsing into the passenger’s seat beside Okuyasu.

“You okay?” Okuyasu asked breathlessly as Josuke shut the door behind himself, worry etched deep onto the lines of his face. “I honked the horn and everything but you didn’t come out so I didn’t know if you heard and I got really sc—” he stopped talking in the middle of his thought, looking Josuke over intently and frowning. “Dude. You’re shaking.”

It was true. Josuke’s hands were trembling violently where they were resting on his thighs, and he felt cold all over, even though he was inside the car. He looked down at his hands, letting out a harsh breath that was maybe a form of laughing and he brought them closer to his face. “Oh, yeah, you’re right. Huh.”

They didn’t speak for a while, giving Josuke a moment to calm down; there was no sound inside the car other than his rhythmic, laboured breathing, and Okuyasu’s own breath much quieter in sync. The two of them looked at Josuke’s hands, watching as they slowed in their shaking and eventually stilled, falling back limp into his lap. Okuyasu looked up, then, expecting, and Josuke blinked, giving one more exhale before starting his story.

“She’s got a mom and dad,” he began, crafting his words carefully in an awkward, stilting cadence—the last thing he wanted to do was start crying again. “And a dog, too, I think. I think they’ve been kidnapped by this guy Kira.” Okuyasu’s eyes widened at this, shock falling over his face, and Josuke bit his lip and forced the rest of the words out. “He’s really fucked up. He makes Reimi stay in her apartment and—and he forces her to—do stuff.” He bit his lip, shuddering with the memory and purposefully failing to elaborate.

“You really found all that out?” Okuyasu asked, disbelief rather than skepticism in his tone. “How?”

“Well, uh—I saw it.”

“_What?_”

“She came home so I had to hide in the closet,” Josuke began to explain, words rushing out of him almost on their own with no effort required. He’d been on the fence about just how much he should say about what had happened—or how much he even _wanted_ to say—but once he started, there was no stopping. “And I heard her talking on the phone to him and she said a bunch of stuff, then he ended up coming into the apartment and...yeah.” He somehow managed to leave out the weird stuff that had happened between him and Reimi; he was still trying to make sense of it himself, all swirling around uncomfortably in his head like remnants of a half-remembered dream.

Okuyasu took a moment to process all of this, and Josuke watched as he swallowed hard before speaking. “Did he say anything?”

“Uh, not really,” Josuke replied, reluctantly recalling the event in search of anything. “No, wait...actually, he did say this one weird thing before he left. Something like…’stay alive Reimi, do it for Kirchner’.” He tried to grimace out the bad taste that repeating Kira’s words left in his mouth. “But I don’t have any idea who Kirchner is.”

“Huh, yeah. Weird.”

They sat in that state of not knowing, frowning separately to themselves, before something seemed to click inside Okuyasu’s head. “Hold on,” he said quietly, gears turning as he made eye contact with Josuke. “Hold on, Kirchner, that name sounds _super_ familiar to me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah...I had to take this history of art class first semester,” he began, leg bouncing nervously and hitting lightly against the underside of the car’s dashboard. “And I’m dumb so I’m probably mixing this up but I think the professor talked about Kirchner? He was this painter guy in Germany. And he was, like, really fucked up about war or something, so…” Okuyasu trailed off, and his expression seemed to shift with the implication he was coming to; away from the sort of sympathetic anxiety he’d had for Josuke, and towards something darker, more deep set.

“So?”

“So he painted himself missing a hand.”

The implication was clear as Okuyasu finished his thought, quieter than he’d been when he started talking. Josuke felt a chill go through his body, suddenly, crashing over him without warning. He was starting to feel dizzy, the more he thought about it, the more he realized it _happened_, that it wasn’t something he’d imagined, or seen on TV—that it had been happening for who knows how long, that it had been happening all summer before this moment—

“Maybe it’s her mom’s hand, then,” Okuyasu thought out loud, leaning against the steering wheel and speaking to the windshield in an idle tone. “Maybe she tried to, y’know—to off herself, so he cut off her mom’s hand as like a threat to make sure she didn’t do it?” He turned to Josuke to get his opinion, expression growing slowly more vulnerable at the lack of response he received. “I dunno. That’s probably really stupid—”

“It’s not.” It had been Josuke’s turn to stare out the windshield, lost in the shadowed curvatures of trees, of sidewalks, of buildings in peripheral. He’d barely heard Okuyasu speak; it was more as if the hypothesis had just wiggled its way into his head, transmitted, leaving him with dull waves of panicked nausea. “Probably—shit, that’s probably exactly what happened.” He wouldn’t have believed in any other day, or any other time, but maybe all this fucked-up stuff he’d seen had made him naive in the worst way possible. After all, if what had happened in Reimi’s apartment could be real, why couldn’t that be real? If this street, the street he’d walked down too many times to count, the street that now looked sad and alien in the darkness and distorted curve of the windshield, could be the scene of trauma like that, who could say it didn’t go deeper? That it was not some random accident he’d stumbled across, but something planned? That maybe it was not just this street but all of Morioh that had been festering like this, right under his nose, unseen by him until now? Would that be worse?

“Dude,” came Okuyasu’s uncharacteristically quiet voice from what seemed like a much greater distance, again transmitted with no perception of being spoken. There was no need for an end to the thought; Josuke was shaking again, weak like a wet leaf in a rainstorm, breathing coming more and more shallow as panic started to seep in. He turned to face Okuyasu, and found his friend’s face strangled in concern, like he was struggling to find something to say. “You wanna tell Keicho?” he finally managed to get out.

“No,” Josuke replied immediately, a little harsher than he intended, and he cursed himself internally as he saw the wince it caused pass through Okuyasu. “I mean, I—I got all that information super illegally. You could probably get in trouble for even just being here with me. And Keicho would kick my ass if he found out I dragged you into all this.” he laughed dryly, the sound devoid of any mirth it might typically suggest. “And besides it’s not like—it’s not like I can even _prove_ anything...I didn’t think to bring a camera or a recorder or anything, you know, so it’s just—just what I saw. And that doesn’t mean anything.” As he spoke, his voice strained higher, threatening tears as his chest tightened with each quick and empty breath. “I’m the only person who knows.”

“Dude…” Okuyasu repeated, still seemingly unable to express what he needed to say. It was something too heavy for the both of them, everything that had happened, sitting uncomfortably between them and bearing down like a dense atmosphere. It was agonizing for Josuke to watch his friend’s face, that vulnerable expression, seeking for words that would fix everything, bring things back to normal. There was no normal anymore. It had gone too far at this point; even if they decided now never to talk or think about it again, to just have the rest of their summer like everything was the same, it would still linger somewhere in the back of Josuke’s brain. It would probably be there forever. He knew this, and he was sure Okuyasu must have known it too, at least a little; Josuke knew he wasn’t dumb, no matter how much he thought he was. But his eyes were still full of that sad desperation to erase what had happened, to bring back something that was gone, and it broke Josuke’s heart a little.

“This is too crazy,” he finally muttered, turning his body towards the steering wheel and reaching down to turn the ignition. The car hummed to life, filling the tense silence of its interior with the low roar of its motor and the turned-low radio playing some gentle pop song. Josuke blinked at the sudden change: another attempt at putting things back. Would he think about tonight the next time he heard this song? Every time? Shuddering, he tried to empty his head, and think of nothing at all. “Do you wanna—” Okuyasu started, and Josuke cut him off, already ahead of the game.

“Y-Yeah...Yeah, let’s go back. I don’t wanna be here any longer.”

—

Josuke didn’t have a count for how many sleepovers he’d had with Okuyasu in the two years since they’d met. In his head, that time didn’t feel bound by any sort of measurement, just memories of fun they’d had together stretching on like one single sleepover that didn’t end. Usually their sleepovers were _crazy_ fun; playing video games, reading magazines together, listening to music, not sleeping. They would just lie around and talk for hours instead—it drove his mom up the wall. Sometimes, though, they’d have a different kind of sleepover: less fun, skipping right to the whole _talking-in-the-dark _part. It would start with Okuyasu calling him on the phone in a real quiet voice, if it wasn’t too late, or standing outside his bedroom window like a friendly ghost if it was. Then Josuke would walk silently through the house to let him in, slipping his socks on so as not to risk creaking something and waking his mom up. Okuyasu would thank him, a little embarrassed, and start mumbling on their way down the hallway; _Keicho’s pissed at me again _or _things are real bad with Dad again_ or whatever reason he had to get out of the house for the night. Then they’d just talk it out in Josuke’s room, however long that took. His mom grumbled about it, but never kicked Okuyasu out, or told him to stop coming over like that; she understood, at least to some degree. Sometimes these types of sleepovers would last two or three days.

It was clear right off the bat that this was one of the latter sleepovers, though the usual roles were reversed. Okuyasu had to open the door for the two of them—Josuke’s hands were still shaking, even now, and he kept dropping the key to his house. They moved quietly as they could, wary of those in the house who were asleep: Josuke’s mom in her room, Shizuka in her crib there, Jotaro sprawled awkwardly on the living room couch under a too-small blanket. He opened one tired eye as Josuke and Okuyasu tried to get past him unnoticed, looking at both of them for a moment before (seemingly) going back to sleep with no comment.

Okuyasu made a beeline for Josuke’s bed once they got into his room, pulling his shoes off as he went in an awkward, unbalanced action before falling back onto the mattress with a groaning sigh.

“Man...I’m exhausted. Seriously, I could probably fall asleep right now…” He laid his head against one of the pillows as he spoke, stretching his arms over his head. Josuke almost laughed, the sound coming out of his mouth in a puff of air. It sounded so normal, despite everything, like something he would have said any other day at any other sleepover. Josuke was exhausted, too, but he remained on his feet, moving to his mirror to start disassembling his hair. Maybe it was a stupid thing to think about, considering everything, but he didn’t want to make however shitty waking up tomorrow was going to be even worse by going to bed with a head full of product.

As he picked up his comb to start taking down his pompadour, he could see Okuyasu on the bed through the mirror, though his back was turned to him. He was looking away, again, eyes wandering around the room in search of something else. Josuke frowned.

_Does he do this every time?_

He’d never noticed before—or maybe just not cared—but twice in one day had caught his attention, for some reason, and he cleared his throat before speaking in a voice somewhat rough from lack of recent use.

“Dude,” he began, and in the mirror he saw Okuyasu lift his head in response. “You can...you can look, if you want.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t gotta look away if you don’t want to,” he continued, heat rising to his cheeks—he didn’t even really know himself why he was saying any of this, why he’d decided to make it weird when it wasn’t even really a big deal. He _knew_ that, logically, but it somehow felt like a big deal regardless. “Like, if you wanna look, look, y’know? I’m not gonna stop you.”

He was expecting Okuyasu to say something in response, and grimaced slightly, unsure how he was going to manage this becoming a whole _thing_—but he stayed quiet, almost contemplating, then nodded in a small motion and flicked his eyes to the back of Josuke’s head with an almost inaudible sigh...as though he was relieved. Josuke felt strange as he picked up his comb to continue; he could sense Okuyasu looking at him, and watch him doing it in the mirror, split awkwardly into two mediums. It wasn’t a _bad_ feeling; vulnerable, almost, but in a way that felt refreshing and natural, not scary. He finished in silence, shivering a bit as his greased hair hit the back of his neck, and darted quickly into his bathroom, both to rinse the product out and temporarily escape from the weird mood he supposed he had created.

He came back out after a moment, hair now pulled behind him in a slightly damp ponytail, and haphazardly threw the towel he held in his hands over the vacant pillow on the bed before flopping down beside Okuyasu. They always shared the bed, nowadays—they hadn’t when their friendship started, first arguing, then arm wrestling for who got it each time. Eventually it seemed pointless, to make someone sleep on the floor when the bed could fit the both of them, once they were such good friends. They were friends, so they could do stuff like that, and it wouldn’t be weird. Even if Josuke had never even once thought to ask Koichi to share the bed when _they_ had sleepovers together.

Okuyasu sat up and undid his own hair without comment as Josuke crashed next to him, taking slightly less care as he simply ran his fingers through until it hung messily down to his shoulders. Josuke watched him, too; first out of politeness, then out of a realization that this wasn’t really something other people saw them do. Not the state of having their hair down, but the _process_ of that, the physical undoing that seemed so weirdly exposing. Josuke felt himself blushing—just barely, but blushing. Why the fuck was he blushing?

Okuyasu scooted back down and onto the pillow once he was done, turning on his side to face Josuke. They lay there for a long while, still fully dressed, with the lights on; they were too exhausted to even consider getting up again to change either of those things. They didn’t close their eyes to go to sleep, though, just looked into each other’s eyes. It was a communication, a silent transfer of emotions before either of them spoke. Emotions were pooling deep and uncomfortable in Josuke’s chest, burning; now idle, there was nothing for his mind to think about but everything he had seen. He couldn’t even begin to think of what he should say, what he _could_ say. Once he settled on the best thing he could come up with, he coughed a little bit before speaking in a low whisper.

“We really...we really live in a weird world.”

Okuyasu nodded, brow knit tight with concern. _Concern for me_, Josuke thought, and it struck some sort of chord inside his chest.

“Yeah…”

“Yeah.”

Josuke trailed off into silence, but his body kept speaking for him, pricking tears at the corners of his eyes before he could even think to try and stop them. Swallowing thickly, he let it happen, let tears fall freely down his cheeks and onto the pillow under him. Okuyasu reacted almost immediately, frowning and leaning slightly closer to Josuke. His hands twitched where they lay against his body, like he wanted to put them somewhere but didn’t know quite where.

“Dude—”

“Why are there people like Kira, man?” Josuke interrupted, louder and squeakier than he meant to as his voice broke with his crying. It felt embarrassing to ask, like he was a dumb little kid, but he couldn’t help it, wondering that. “Why does shit like that have to happen? Why does it happen in Morioh? It’s all so fucked.”

“I dunno.” Okuyasu grimaced, suspended in that expression as Josuke reached up to rub tears out of one eye. He wasn’t used to crying in front of him; usually it was the other way around. That not-knowing was the entirety of Okuyasu’s reply for a while, before he sighed quietly and spoke up again, hesitatingly. “But...I had this weird dream. It was actually the night we found the hand—but I still remember it completely. That’s how weird.”

“Huh?” Josuke tilted his head up a little, sniffling quietly. Okuyasu broke eye contact for the first time, as though he was almost embarrassed.

“Yeah...I kept meaning to tell you about it earlier but I could never find a good time, I guess. It was basically, like...there was Morioh,” Okuyasu began, rolling onto his back and gesturing with his hands to guide his explanation. “But everything was all dark and cold, and I couldn't see anything. And I knew in the dream that it was like that ‘cuz there weren’t any robins. You know how you sometimes just know things like that in dreams?” Josuke nodded a little, and Okuyasu continued with a small exhale through his nose. “Anyway...there weren’t any robins, so everything was bad. And it was just this darkness for so long, and I was so scared. But then, all of the sudden I heard this...this huge flapping of wings, and it was like thousands and _thousands_ of robins had been set free. And they brought down this—this _blinding_ light as they flew.” Okuyasu was tearing up himself, now, his face contorting with it as he struggled a little to speak. He kept at it, though, detailing his dream, his weird dream that Josuke was enraptured by even if he didn’t get it.

“And then all of a sudden I could see _everything_; like, all of Morioh, the houses, and shops and stuff...Koichi and Yukako, and Rohan, and everyone...and you and me, man. I saw _us._ We were in the park together, eating lunch, just...talking and sitting next to each other, but—” He stopped talking with a breathy sob, cutting himself off and taking a moment to try and regroup. Josuke didn’t dare try and speak until he knew Okuyasu was done.

“I dunno. It was so _beautiful_. I’m not smart, so I’m not good with, like, symbolism and stuff...but I knew that the robins were really love. They brought that blinding light of love down, and it just seemed like...like love was gonna make everything okay again. And it did, in the dream. It was so dark, but then there was love there, and everything was beautiful.”

Josuke was stunned. To him, there was no way he could have responded to what Okuyasu had said—it _felt_ too much, seemed too deep set and integral to this moment to even be commented upon. At the same time, it seemed a waste to just let it pass. This was _important_. Josuke knew it, from the way his heart felt like it was twisting and twirling around all crazy in his chest, from how his brain was tripping over itself and filling his skull with varied and confusing thoughts. In his head he thought as loudly as he could, _Okuyasu, I care so much about you and you mean the entire world to me_, and in speaking he made a stupid joke about it:

“So, what, you’re saying you love me, dude?” He half-laughed out. It was easier to tease about it, make it seem silly, than to think hard about how he really felt and treat it with the weight he knew it probably warranted.

“Yeah,” came Okuyasu’s response, unexpectedly. Josuke’s chest tightened, faster than he was able to put words in his head to why. It was a bad feeling—why was it bad?—but then it faded into something uncomfortably neutral, fluctuating from giddy to anxious, which was somehow worse. It was a blessing that Okuyasu kept speaking, so he could listen and not think: “I mean, you’re my best friend. And you’re _so _cool...so of course I…” _love you_, was the obvious conclusion in Josuke’s weird mind, but Okuyasu’s face fell ever so slightly, and he didn’t say it. To Josuke, it was as if he had picked up on his feeling, and come to some realization; he felt guilty, to have infected Okuyasu with his fucked up energies. “...well, yeah.”

Josuke relaxed, relief flushing out whatever his brain had been trying to do just then. Of course, it made sense! They were friends. _Best_ friends. Being best friends, they could feel that way about each other—_love_ each other—without anything _weird_ being implied. Who was to say they couldn’t use that word, that concept? He sighed happily, smiling at Okuyasu—things were cool, nothing was weird. In _this_ sense, if in nothing else, things were normal. Josuke didn’t know how he would have been able to stomach it if that wasn’t the case. “Thanks, man. I think you’re cool, too...you’re a really neat guy.”

“Thanks, man,” Okuyasu replied, smiling his little smile. “You too.”

They were quiet for a long time, breath slowing into a sleep pace as they just lay next to each other. Josuke felt himself starting to slip, and Okuyasu looked ever further gone; but there was something else on Josuke’s mind that he knew he had to get out before they both fell asleep and he forgot.

“What do you think it means?” Josuke murmured sleepily into Okuyasu’s ear. “Your dream...”

Okuyasu laughed a little before answering, just as sleepy and murmuring as Josuke was. “Hell if I know, dude. I guess...everything’s fucked until the robins come, maybe.”

Josuke laughed, too, though to him it wasn’t very funny; it seemed serious. They stopped talking soon after that, giving in to the pull to fall asleep. Okuyasu went first, and Josuke looked at him a small while longer as he slept so peacefully. Everything was normal...and yet, as he started to drift off himself, a little shard of that _weird _feeling lingered behind, following him into his sleep.

—

_Josuke had been afraid to fall asleep, thinking he would dream back into existence the terrible thing he’d bared witness to that night. Blissfully, he was spared; he dreamed instead of Okuyasu’s robins. At first they crowded and bumped against each other, squawking angrily in a wall of ruffling feathers and pecking beaks. As Josuke watched, however, they seemed to get their act together, slowly peeling away to reveal the scene of his sleep. He was hovering over himself, looking down at where he and Okuyasu lay next to each other on his bed, much as they were in the real world. Only here, it was the middle of the day, sun streaming through Josuke’s bedroom window as they rested on top of the blankets, idle. They wore only their underwear; not in any sort of weird sex way—like _other_ dreams he’d had about his friend, and promptly forgotten on purpose—but more like nudity-as-knowledge, as a visual cue in for complete and utter intimacy. They were not sleeping—their eyes were open, and as they lay in bed, their fingers were intertwined. All of a sudden the sun became so, so bright, obscuring everything, flooding Josuke’s vision in white—what had Okuyasu called it again?_

_(The blinding light of love...that’s right...so we’re in…!)_

—

Josuke woke with a gasp, shivering from head to toe. He took a brief moment to assess things, blinking as he adjusted to the new state; he couldn’t read the clock on his nightstand from where he was, but it was morning from the bonus light now visible through his window on top of the light they’d kept on all night (oops). The pillow was still wet with tears, but fresh-seeming, as though he’d wept in his sleep, too. Oh, and there was also the fact that somehow, during the night, he and Okuyasu had completely intertwined themselves. Their legs were interlocked, their arms wrapped around each other’s backs, and their faces were so much closer together than they had been, foreheads almost pressing together. They’d migrated inward, no longer using separate pillows, but rather making use of the awkward boundary where one ended and the other began.

Growing hot and embarrassed in that lack of space, a question came to mind that he’d never given much thought before, because it had seemed so obvious:

_What are me and Okuyasu?_

Best friends. Duh. But even that descriptor, which he’d relied on, seemed too broad and commonplace for what they now shared, following their conversation last night. What was the answer, then? Kids in high school had called them something else, taunting and sneering in the halls: _Off to see your little boyfriend, Jojo?_ But they were just idiots who didn’t get it, who were jealous of how close Josuke and Okuyasu were (as _friends_). That’s how he’d felt at the time, anyway; right this second, he wasn’t sure exactly how he felt, which he didn’t like. Then there was his mom, too, though. The weird conversation they’d had after Okuyasu had gone back home after one of their many sleepovers: _It seems like you’re spending an awful lot of time with that Nijimura kid...if you have anything you ever want to tell me, Josuke, I’m all ears. I love you no matter what, okay?_ He hadn’t thought, well, _anything_ of it at the time...but had she been…?

Okuyasu was still fast asleep, perhaps completely unaware of the situation the two of them were now in. Josuke stayed very still, wondering what he was thinking about; probably not this. Probably not any of this...Josuke was all screwed in the head from everything that had happened, and it was making his brain think weird and uncomfortable things that he didn’t need to be thinking about. When he cautiously wriggled out of Okuyasu’s grasp, carefully so as not to wake him up, Josuke lied to himself that it was for his sake—so he wouldn’t get embarrassed when he woke up and saw.

It was cool to spend as much time as they did together as friends. It was cool, too, to cry in front of each other and share a bed as friends. Maybe it was even cool to do gay shit like hold hands as friends, as long as you had a good enough excuse for it like Josuke did. But something like this...it crossed the boundary. The boundary between what and what, he couldn’t say, but it crossed it.

Lying on his back and looking up at his ceiling, he regretted what he’d done immediately; he wanted that warmth back, wanted that closeness back. But there was no way to return, so he frowned, and shut his eyes, trying to empty his head of thoughts completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finals are coming up and this is how im coping  
(also that means updates will probably be slower...........sowwy)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING IN THIS CHAPTER FOR:  
-non-explicit sexual content  
-dubious consent maybe?? tbh i have no idea what to call it exactly but i tried to make it VERY uncomfortable on purpose haha

Josuke knew he shouldn’t go back. He knew it even as he listened at his mom’s door the following night to make sure she had gone to sleep, as he tiptoed past Jotaro once again and closed the front door as quietly as he possibly could, as he shivered in the night air: _I shouldn’t go back, this is so stupid_. As he walked, he kept waiting for someone to spot him and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, or maybe to get some signal more subtly from the universe to knock it off, but no such excuse came. Morioh was dead silent all around him, no cars or pedestrians, just the quiet thudding of his bare feet against the pavement (his brain had been too scattered to prioritize slipping shoes on, or even changing out of his pajamas). All of that made sense—it had to be one-thirty, maybe two in the morning. He didn’t know exactly, having been too caught up thinking about doing this to check his clock before finally making up his mind to _do it_.

For the first time, the apartment building was not in and of itself threatening. It was just a building now—third time was the charm. His nerves were localized, centered in his body rather than his location. He pulled the door open with little ceremony, slipping inside with the feigned confidence of someone who lived there, despite the fact that this was easily one of his shadier appearances from an outside perspective. He even took the elevator this time, which was maybe a mistake; there was no physical outlet for his energy through climbing the stairs, leaving him tapping nervously in the empty fluorescent space of the elevator cab. The hallway of the seventh floor, too, seemed less intimidating as he walked at a deceptively calm pace to apartment 710.

He was still trying to rationalize his behavior as he knocked timidly on the door; he wanted to make sure she was still okay, maybe, that there had been no unseen consequence to their strange encounter the night before. Maybe it was to make sure that she was even _real_; at this point, Josuke was still open, even willing, to believe it had all been some horrible, realistic dream. Or maybe subconsciously he was still reeling from how _weird_ he’d felt and acted last night with Okuyasu, trying to reassert his now confronted self-perception...especially given what he suspected would probably happen when Reimi saw him again, based off her own _weird_ behavior. He hadn’t made up his mind whether or not he’d try and stop her by the time she opened up.

For the first time, Reimi was not cautious, or frightened of him. She didn’t bother with the chain, just swung the door open to face him full on; she looked confused, and then settled slowly into a gentle smile, sighing. She was wearing the robe, and it made Josuke suck in a nervous breath. “It’s you,” was all she said at first, the words and the quality of her voice striking Josuke in a strange ripple that seemed to put him at ease: _it’s me._

“Yeah...hi,” he replied, looking down at the ground. “May I come in?” It felt stilted, oddly polite, but he hadn’t planned to get this far, compelled only by the impulse to _be here_.

She hesitated, leaning over his shoulder to look into the hall, before nodding and stepping aside to allow him to walk into the apartment. “You came back,” she remarked as he awkwardly took a seat at the edge of the loveseat, hesitant about what boundaries he was allowed to cross (as hypocritical as such a line of thought might have been, all things considered).

“Well...yeah. I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but—” she stopped in the middle of her thought, her face scrunching up slightly as she tried to think of words to put it in. “...why?”

“Uh... I just wanted to see you, I guess. I dunno…”

As lame an answer as it felt, it seemed to make Reimi happy—again her face shifted lazily into that same gentle smile she’d had at the door. Josuke thought it suited her well. “I looked for you in my closet tonight,” she admitted after a moment’s silence, laughing quietly at herself. “I know it’s crazy. I don’t know anything about you. But—I can’t help liking you.”

“It’s not crazy. I like you too.”

“I liked being with you last night.”

“Same here.” He was talking too quickly to know if it was really true, responding automatically like in some preset rhythm he hadn’t been made aware of. Then it had to be true, if it just came out like that, right?

“Please be with me again,” she murmured, straightforward and soft spoken. Until now she had been lingering still by the door, almost as hesitant in Josuke in her own home, but with that she walked and sat beside him, just close enough that their legs made feather-light contact. There wasn’t anyway he could refuse—not when she spoke in that tone, looked over to him with wide, seeking eyes. 

He didn’t know exactly how long they talked for; the apartment seemed to be its own pocket dimension, removed from such an arbitrary measurement. Despite how late it was, Josuke hardly felt tired. On the contrary, he felt perpetually full of what rested somewhere between a nervous and intrigued energy. They talked about practically every topic Josuke could think of—hobbies, music, weird what-if questions they both ended up laughing through their answers to. Her job at the Slow Club, and her routine of sleeping through the day to work at night. Mundane a topic as it might have been, Josuke was enamoured by it—and by her, in a way. She was so unlike anyone he’d ever met before, and in the worst of ways she had seen and been through things he couldn’t even fully comprehend. As present as it was in his mind, he never brought up what had happened the night before; even if he’d be able to come up with words to try and bring it up, seeing her like this, relaxed, maybe happy...he didn’t want to fuck that up. She cried periodically as she spoke, weird and discordant sobbing fits that didn’t seem connected to anything she was really saying, but Josuke supposed it was probably reflexive.

They’d gone to the same school—Reimi giggled when she realized it, the loudest sound she’d made yet, and it rang pleasantly through the living room like a bird’s chirp. “That means...you would’ve just been starting middle school when I was a third year there,” she mused, grinning, but Josuke wasn’t so amused. Had they really been in such close proximity to each other? Walking around the same halls without ever running into each other? It wasn’t _that_ big of a school, after all...he wouldn’t have thought it was possible...he was still trying to rack his memory for any glimpse of her when he felt her grab his arm, standing and pulling him up along with her. “Come on, I’ll prove it. I still have my yearbook…”

Then they were in Reimi’s room, squished close on her twin-sized mattress and perching a five-year-old Budogaoka yearbook in both their laps. Sure enough, there was Josuke at age 13, scrawny and awkward with a face full of acne and the earliest experiment at what would become his signature hairstyle. “I missed picture day that year,” Reimi explained, voice close and hot to Josuke’s ear by sole virtue of how pressed together they were. “But I was on yearbook committee so I’m in the club picture...yeah, there, that’s me.” She reached over to point herself out among the rows of smiling students, her arm resting on Josuke’s thigh. She was in the back row; her hair came down to her shoulders, dark brown as opposed to the pink Josuke knew, but the girl in the photo was undoubtedly her. The eyes were the same. Like everyone else in the photo she was smiling, but she smiled with her mouth closed, expression tight-lipped and slightly strained. 

“I didn’t finish my last year...because of it. But one of the other girls on the committee mailed me a copy that summer. It was so sweet of her, really…” Reimi sighed, her shoulders drooping somewhat as she lingered over the photo. It was the first allusion she’d made that whole night to the elephant in the room, the piece of her life Josuke had bared witness to. Her words pulled from the depth of Josuke’s brain a once-lost memory: walking past a group of upper-classmen in the hall, hearing them snicker among themselves about some rumor that a girl in the other class had gotten herself knocked up and had to leave school. They were _laughing_. They didn’t actually know. Josuke shivered as he put two and two together.

They read the rest of the yearbook in silence, the only sound their breathing and the rustle of each page Reimi turned. When they finished it, they still had nothing to say to one another; Reimi turned to face Josuke, and he looked into her eyes, realizing he’d been looking at her and not the yearbook for who knew how long. They just looked at each other, for what felt like an eternity, and then without comment Reimi closed her eyes and leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth. Josuke wasn’t surprised—just confused. Confused enough to kiss her back, and still not say anything as they mutually pulled away for breath. He just blinked at her, mouth still hanging somewhat open. _Why are you doing this?_ He thought silently, and then he mirrored and kissed her as if to communicate telepathically. _Why am I doing this?_

It wasn’t like he didn’t think something like this was going to happen. After all, that’s why he’d torn up his room trying to find the pack of condoms Keicho had given him as a joke at graduation, that priority ranking above clothes or shoes as he knelt squinting at the expiration date in the darkness of his room. Maybe that was why he came here at all, because he knew this would happen, and he wanted it. Did he want it? He was still trying to answer this as Reimi stuck her tongue in his mouth, as she pulled him on top of her and sent the yearbook falling gracelessly onto her bedroom floor, as she moved her hands off of his back to pull both sides of her robe open.

Josuke wanted to help her. That was all. He wanted to help her still, like he’d wanted to help her and couldn’t last night from the closet. And maybe this would help her; to do this with someone who _wanted_ to help her, who wasn’t hurting her when they did it. Being gentle with her like he was (half out of inexperience and half for her sake), letting her take the lead...if he couldn’t help her in any active way, he could make up for everything that had happened to her this way, maybe. And he supposed he liked her. He had a little crush on her, but it was like having a crush on someone you see waiting at the bus stop or in line for a movie; someone intriguing who exists in one moment in time and space and never leaves. That made this okay, even though they’d just met, because he supposed he liked her. 

He _really_ liked how soft she was, and how warm, and the little sounds she made when he nervously ran his hands over her body...he _was_ an eighteen-year old boy, after all...and wasn’t this just what boys and girls did? It was normal, which was why he didn’t even have to do or say anything: it just happened. With how weird everything had been recently, Josuke liked being normal.

Despite that, he couldn’t seem to get out of his own head, even when _it_ actually happened; it felt _way_ too much, good in his body and bad in his brain. He couldn’t seem to focus on anything. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, see her face in a moment like this—even the thought was dizzying. He’d probably have a heart attack if they made eye contact. At the same time, closing his eyes made his imagination fill in terrifying shocks of visuals—what he’d seen from inside the closet, when he’d heard sounds so close to the gasps and moans she was making under him but so much worse. That was different, right? Kira hurt her, and he wasn’t hurting her—even if it was the same _act,_ purely physically, they weren’t the same—right? He looked only at the Pink FLoyd poster hanging above her bed, making intense eye contact with Roger Waters and curling his fingers tight in her bedsheets. _Am I helping her? Am I helping her?_

He hardly heard Reimi as she spoke, her voice quiet and breathy in the first words she’d spoken since it had started:

“Hurt me.”

“Huh?”

“Hurt me, Josuke,” she repeated, opening her eyes and making him look at her, finally—she was smiling—he felt like he was about to cry. “Please. Please hurt me.”

It was too much. He couldn’t stand hearing her say that, couldn’t stand her expression, and looked away again. “I don’t wanna hurt you,” he murmured to Roger Waters, his voice sounding as though it came not from himself but from somewhere far, far away where he could hear its echo. “I wanna help you...that’s all…”

That was all. He couldn’t think of anything else to even say, not even as she brought her hand up to stroke his cheek, prodded roughly at his tightly closed lips with her fingers. He kept his mouth shut, teeth clenched almost painfully as she persisted; this wasn’t like that, Josuke wasn’t like him. 

_This isn’t like that…! I’m not like him…!_

But still her voice came, unanswered, the same distressing plea. 

“Please hurt me...please…hurt me…”

_..._

When it was over, Josuke slid awkwardly out and off of her and onto the carpet floor, his back against the mattress; there was so little space on the bed, and it felt uncomfortable to just keep laying on her or something. Reimi sat up a little against the headboard, sighing and rustling the sheets; she was crossing her legs, or bringing her knees up to her chest, maybe. Her sigh, too, felt obscured—maybe she was happy, satisfied, or maybe she was annoyed or angry with him. That uncertainty was unwelcome, worming uncomfortably in Josuke’s gut as he drummed his fingers mutely in the room’s thick carpet. He already felt conflicted enough on his own, without any of her input—it had felt good, in the moment, but now that it was over things seemed more and more strange and uncomfortable. It had been his first time, but it didn’t feel special like that the way he’d thought it would. It didn’t feel like anything had even _happened_ at all...more as if Josuke had just not done anything to stop it from happening. He’d expected it would be awkward, sure, but he hadn’t expected to be _frightened_, scared like he was when she’d asked him to...do that. That fear lingered distantly and turned him small, like the thirteen year old version of himself in the yearbook, regressed.

When Josuke finally stood to leave, unable to sit in the silence anymore, he turned to find that Reimi had in fact hardly shifted at all. She still lay against the mattress, legs spread slightly and head supported by a pillow. At ease, but limp, so limp, like how he’d seen her limp across the loveseat the night before. Her expression was not happy, not sad, but vague and open mouthed. They met eyes—Josuke choked his way out, voice wavering.

“Thank you,” he started, unsure what you were supposed to say in a situation like this, afterwards. “I really have to go...I’ll see you again—”

“When?”

Josuke didn’t have a good answer.

“Soon...maybe...I don’t know.”

Reimi sighed, shoulders drooping, head rolling back. So limp. Josuke let himself out of the apartment with nothing else but a nervous gnawing of his lower lip, thinking to himself over and over, _that didn’t help her at all._

—

There wasn’t anything he could do. He’d gotten so far, too far to ever go back from; even if he’d had it in him to walk away entirely, Josuke knew he’d never get her out of his head, never unknow what he knew or unsee what he’d seen. But despite all of that, he was still so _stuck_. He couldn’t go to the police—at best they’d think he was full of shit, at worst he’d have to admit that he had been kinda sorta breaking and entering. His mom would freak out—if she didn’t _also_ think he was full of shit, that is—and then she’d make him go to the police, and it would be the same. The thought of telling even Okuyasu about this new development was anxiety inducing; in any other universe he’d have been on the phone immediately telling all about how he finally _lost it_, but in this one the prospect brought up some hot and sickeningly sweet emotion that Josuke couldn’t understand beyond how horrible it made him feel. He decided to call it guilt and leave it at that, even though he knew it was much more. This weird new thing was something he had to process on his own, no matter how much he didn’t want to. So he was stuck and there wasn’t anything more that he could do.

He went back to the Slow Club the following night in his nervous stupor, dragging Okuyasu along with him once again. It felt like a compromise between forgetting about Reimi, which was a painful, _painful_ concept, and going back to her apartment once again, which in some ways almost seemed like it could be worse. By returning to the audience, he was still there, seeing her, but seeing her like everyone else did. Here she was the Pink Lady, who was beautiful and sang like a goddess, not Sugimoto Reimi who he’d seen scared and violated, who had sobbed in his arms and begged for him to hurt her. Still, he liked the idea that maybe she would see him in the crowd and make eye contact with him, and it would soothe her somewhat, to know he was there.

Unlike their last visit to the Slow Club, Josuke and Okuyasu were there for no other purpose than to have a good time: it genuinely _was_ for fun. There was no expectation of later sleuthing (despite the disposable camera Josuke had taken to keeping on his person just in case), no watch alarm set—they were more at ease in the no longer foreign space of the club, and as a result were more boisterous and outspoken, perhaps bordering on annoying to the other patrons. Every so often, though, following a laugh, they’d look at each other and lock eyes, expressions fading into some sort of mutual but unacknowledged remembrance. That weight they carried hung on both their shoulders, Josuke’s exaggerated by the addition of what he carried all on his own, and never fully managed to go away.

Then Reimi came out to sing, just as it was starting to weigh too much, and that was a relief, to enter her world again. She sang the same song, but it didn’t matter, because she sang it so well:

_Oh, I want you, I don’t know if I need you…_

All that existed was sound, was blue light, was Reimi’s dress and the sequins reflecting out into the audience and catching Josuke’s eyes in a comforting intrusion. Like before, it was as if everything else was lost to the waves of her song, inconsequential. Josuke was sure he’d imagined it, but for a moment it seemed as if she made eye contact with him in the crowd, the corners of her mouth turning up in an expression that would have been a smile were her mouth not open with what felt like a continuous single note.

The audience moved as if one contiguous body, constructed of many autonomous parts; more people attended now than the first night Josuke had seen Reimi sing, fleshing out the Slow Club and filling in the gaps it had held. Josuke was acutely aware of every other audience member, but not in an overwhelming way—more like connection, like being a cog in a machine blissfully aware of every other that was just like it. There was a couple leaning against each other, looking at each other as the guy mouthed the words of the song to his girl...there was an older woman trying to inconspicuously take a phone call in one of the back corners of the club...there was a man in a suit sitting two tables away, crying as he watched Reimi sing…

Josuke noticed him most of all, tearing his eyes away from Reimi reluctantly and turning to face him, and his first thought was _why the fuck did I not realize he was here before?_

He recognized Kira immediately, obviously; it was less like he was haunted by the man’s features, but more as if the memory was lying in wait, under the surface but ready to be dredged up once more at a moment’s notice. There was no mistaking the unassuming combed-back hairstyle, the unpleasant profile angle of his jaw, the misleading drooping of a businessman’s mien in his eyes. He sat leaned back in his chair, one hand curled around his drink where it sat untouched on the table, and he was crying. He made no attempt to hide it; the wet sheen of tears pooled in his eyes and left snail tracks down his cheeks, perversely uninhibited. Josuke was _revolted_. Terrified, sure—so terrified that his whole body felt cold and reeling—but also revolted, just seeing him here, pretending to be human. He was part of this space, which had once been a sanctuary of sorts where a Reimi unterrorized and unhurt lived, and he had tainted it irreversibly. 

Okuyasu noticed Josuke’s staring, watching Kira watch Reimi, and frowned, tapping him on the shoulder. Josuke flinched at the contact, swiveling back around to face his friend, and he could see on Okuyasu’s face how terrified he must have looked himself, the expression mirrored instinctively. The corners of Okuyasu’s mouth curled, going to speak, but Josuke picked up the implication, nodding his head back at Kira before mouthing silently.

_That’s him._

_Who? _Okuyasu mouthed back, leaning forward and looking over Josuke’s shoulder.

_Kira._

The two syllables fell easily from Josuke’s mouth, too easily for what they meant, and Okuyasu stiffened as the realization went through him. His own mouth hung open, but made no attempt at syllables to continue their silent conversation; just hung open, staring, realizing. The two of them stared, first at Kira, but then inevitably back at each other, Okuyasu searching for something Josuke couldn’t give or find. They were helpless and anxious, even if it was together. The song was over.

Reimi bowed and scurried out of sight into the wings with no further comment as the applause started, declining to stay and bask in its presence. The audience started moving, resuming conversation now that the spell was broken, and Kira was among them, standing and pushing in his chair behind him before heading for the door. He moved so, so fast, and almost in perfect silence, like a cat. Josuke panicked at the sight—that Kira would get away with it again, in some fashion, that he’d come and go unknown and unbothered—and this was the chance to finally _do something_, for Josuke to finally pull himself out of the rut and towards some sort of action. What exactly that action would actually _be_ was still pending, aside from its basic concept: “Gonna follow him,” Josuke muttered in an excuse for an explanation, standing up out of his own chair almost too fast and feeling somewhat dizzy. As long as Josuke didn’t lose too much track of him, he’d probably be able to recognize him on the street...then he could trail his car, too, if he saw it...if he could learn even a little bit more, even _anything _more that might make him able to help…

“What?” Okuyasu replied in surprise as Josuke hurriedly dug some money out of his pocket so his friend could take the train back into Morioh. He looked confused and more than a little worried, which Josuke felt bad about—but time was of the essence, and Kira was already closing the door of the Slow Club behind him and walking out into S City. 

“You’re really gonna—”

But Josuke was already walking at a brisk pace out the door himself, mouthing a quick _sorry,_ feeling for his disposable camera in his pocket to reassure himself and following the back of Kira’s horrible head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year i have NO excuse for how long this took lmao


	8. Chapter 8

“Okay, dude, look at the clock over there and tell me what time it is.”

Okuyasu’s eyes darted obediently to the opposite wall of Tonio’s from where he and Josuke sat at their usual table, squinting to read the clock’s hands from such a distance. “Uh...three thirty?”

“Five minutes from now you’re not gonna fuckin’ _believe_ what I’ve told you.”

Despite Josuke’s casual tone, Okuyasu didn’t seem nearly as lighthearted, a grimace etched into his features as he leaned over the table to look intently at Josuke as he spoke. Josuke suspected it was for a good reason though; he had to have looked as exhausted as he felt, still in his clothes from the previous night, hairspray slowly but surely starting to lose its integrity. Josuke _was_ exhausted, more tired than he could remember being in a long time, but it was beaten out by the energy forced into him by what he’d seen last night...and what he’d come here to tell Okuyasu all about.

“Yeah, yeah, spit it out, man. You had me totally freaked last night…” Okuyasu attempted critique with his tone, but it was neutered by the wide and somewhat frightened sheen in his eyes as he peered at Josuke intently, as if trying to learn what had happened without words. Josuke couldn’t help but feel a little bad...but he exhaled the feeling through his nose, trying to organize his thoughts into one coherent story.

“It was easier than I thought to keep track of him, ‘cuz, you know, he’s got that blonde hair and stuff. He has a really old car, too...so I was able to follow him back into Morioh to his house. Least I _think_ it was his house, anyway. He lives out near the villas, like where all the rich people live. I parked on the street so I could see the front of the house and the driveway, but far enough away so it wouldn’t look suspicious or anything. And I got my camera out so I was ready to take pictures. Nothing really happened for a while...he just went inside and made dinner, I think? But then later it started to get scary.

“Maybe like...two hours after he and I left the Slow Club, a car pulled into his driveway and parked in front of his house. The guy who got out of it—I can’t be a _hundred_ percent certain, obviously, but I’d bet good money it was that guy in the grey shirt from when we first went to Reimi’s apartment. He had the same spiky hair. You remember that guy?” Josuke brought both his hands up to his head to imitate said hair, and Okuyasu nodded vigorously without saying anything. He looked completely engrossed in Josuke’s story, not daring to break the spell with his own voice.

“So, he gets out of the car, and he has this woman with him. She was...she was pretty short, with short brown hair, and she looked like she was probably our age. A tiny bit older, maybe.” Josuke paused, grimacing at the thought. “And she was dressed like she’d just been out partying or something. Real short dress and a lot of jewelry. She was _super_ drunk, too, like couldn’t-walk-by-herself drunk, so Grey Shirt Guy had his arm around her waist and was helping her up to the door. He knocked on the door, and Kira came out and greeted them all friendly. Especially her...I think, uh, he took her hand and kissed it.” Josuke screwed up his face in disgust at that, though he knew Okuyasu couldn’t possibly understand why. “And he let both of them into the house.

“It was pretty quiet for a while then, too. Then maybe—maybe another hour later, I heard this _weird_ sound from inside the house...it was like...like this kind of _booming_ sound, almost like something had blown up? But something small, that didn’t cause any sort of damage. I saw the windows of the house shake a little bit, but that was it—that and that weird boom. And that was it until morning...no one else went in or came out of the house.

“At maybe...eight or so, this morning, this guy comes rushing up the street on a bike, and he gets off it really quick and lets it fall on the ground while he goes up and bangs on the door. And he was _mad_, dude. Literally, he just kept pounding on the door with both fists until Grey Shirt Guy came and answered it. Uh...I got a few pictures of the guy, but I don’t remember off the top of my head what he looked like. Short hair, and glasses, maybe?” Josuke stuck his tongue out, trying in vain to remember. “Anyway...he just lets Grey Shirt Guy have it, yelling at him and getting all up in his face. I couldn’t really hear what he was saying, but I think it had something to do with the girl from the night before. Maybe he was her boyfriend or something. Grey Shirt Guy kinda just takes it, and then he goes back into the house and gets Kira. Well, he just started yelling at Kira, too, but Kira was able to kind of...mellow him out, I guess? And he calmed down eventually. Kira was all friendly with him, and kinda guided him away from the house, and he slapped him on the back the way guys do sometimes. But...but he looked at Grey Shirt Guy just before he did it, and they shared this weird look between them like they were up to something.

“The guy who’d been yelling started walking back to where his bike was, but I caught sight of something on his back as he turned around. Some kind of...device? It was _super_ small, so I hardly saw it—I only noticed because it had a little red light on it that caught my eye. He started walking back to the bike...and…” Josuke faltered, doubt clouding his recounting. He focused his gaze on Okuyasu, who looked as intent as ever. “This is gonna sound like a load of bull, but you gotta believe me, okay? It’s a hundred percent true. I wouldn’t lie about something fucked up like this.”

“I believe you, dude,” came Okuyasu’s immediate, unhesitating reply, and Josuke figured that was enough of a reassurance. He took a deep breath in and out before continuing, eyes shifting to look down at the table.

“Kira...he reached in his pocket for something. I think he must have been pressing a button of some sort...because…” Josuke gulped. “‘Cuz, when he did, the guy blew up.”

_“What?”_

“I told you, it sounds totally fake,” Josuke continued, speaking at a quicker and somewhat more anxious pace. “But I swear, dude, he _blew up_. Went up in a fireball and everything. With a _really_ loud sound—it made the windshield shake, and I had to cover my ears. Those villas are all so far apart from each other...I guess stuff like that can happen, and no one hears it unless they’re right there. The scariest part, though, was how _fast _it was. He was there, and then he blew up, and then there was _nothing_. Not, even, you know, blood and guts. Just a little pile of ash, like a fuckin’ _cartoon_.” Josuke sighed, and watched Okuyasu’s face contort in what seemed like a memory of what he himself had felt only earlier that same day. “It had to be whatever that thing Kira stuck to him was. And, I dunno, I kinda put two and two together with the sound I’d heard last night...the girl never came out of the house. So, I left after that. Yeah.” He finished his story on a down beat, trailing off and speaking less to Okuyasu and more to a crumpled up napkin between them on the table.

Okuyasu was stunned. He just sat back in his chair for a long moment, gears visibly churning to process everything he’d been told. He didn’t seem to have any reply, which Josuke didn’t blame him for; as it was happening it had seemed...normal, almost, but only in describing it to someone else did he realize how bizarre it all was, how horrifying. He’d seen someone die. He stewed in that uncomfortably, in his own silence, before he finally heard Okuyasu speak up, voice uneasy and wavering. “What are you gonna do, man?” he near-whispered. Their faces had somehow gotten so much closer together.

It was such a simple question, and it broke Josuke’s heart, because he knew he didn’t have any good answer. There wasn’t anything he could say that would put Okuyasu at ease, would lessen the terror he’d so unceremoniously dumped onto him. “I dunno...I’m getting the pictures developed. Then I’ll give ‘em to Keicho, probably. Other than that...I dunno.”

“B-But, you’re not gonna, you know, keep at it, right?”

Josuke sighed before giving his answer. “I gotta.”

“Why?” Okuyasu’s bottom lip quivered along with the single syllable, worried and afraid, and again Josuke knew there was nothing he could really say that would fix it.

“I just—I _gotta_, man. It’s just like...I’m seeing something that was always here. I’m wrapped up in the middle of some big Morioh mystery that’s been bubbling under the surface for who knows how long. Even if I _wanted_ to, I couldn’t just walk away, not now.”

“You really like mysteries that much?” Okuyasu attempted a laugh, but it came out forced and sigh-like, yielding.

“Yeah. Guess I do.”

“I get it, I guess,” Okuyasu relented, shoulders dropping noticeably from where he’d been tensed up the same as Josuke. “‘Cuz you’re being a real fuckin’ mystery right now, dude.” Josuke laughed, supposing it was funny; even as he did so, though, he could feel some implicit message in what had been said, consequential but unable to be fully understood through everything else. Maybe it was because Okuyasu didn’t laugh, and instead broke eye contact and got very quiet before speaking again.

“I’m just worried. About you.”

“Really?”

“Well, yeah, duh. Of course I worry about you, man. Is that...weird?”

“No...Not if you don’t think it’s weird.”

Their faces were still so close together, so close, and they seemed to realize it at the same time: that they had pulled towards one another like magnets, inevitable. Josuke chickened out first, weird as he was, and leaned back in his chair, eyes darting everywhere but across the table at Okuyasu. Okuyasu soon followed suit, and they continued their meal like normal people, spell broken.

Only as they both walked out the door did Josuke make any further reference to this thing between them, grabbing Okuyasu’s hand to stop him in his tracks and turn him around so they could face each other. “Look, dude,” he started, trying to sound reassuring but coming off more strained than he meant. “You don’t gotta worry, okay? I’m serious. Everything’s gonna be fine, and I’m gonna be okay. Promise.”

It was the first time Josuke could remember knowingly lying to Okuyasu.

—

Then there was waiting again, just as there had been earlier that summer, before everything. It was different now, though. This was not aimless waiting, idle and bordering on hedonistic in its perpetuity. This wait was sharp and concentrated, a clear end date in sight: the three-to-five-business-days it would take the photo lab to process Josuke’s pictures, so he could bring them to Keicho and—maybe—put this whole thing to an end. He worked his hardest to fill his time so the wait would not eat him from the inside, but it felt so weird, just returning to a normal summer. Especially around people who didn’t know, where he had to pretend he’d been having a normal summer this whole time:

“You ever thought about shaving your head?”

Josuke looked over at Yukako from where he was sitting all wrong in a styling chair, back and one leg against the arms of it with his other leg on the ground to idly spin himself in circles. The salon had closed, but Yukako was technically still working—sweeping hair from the floor just as idly, busying herself until she was finally allowed to clock out and the two of them could go somewhere maybe more appropriate for a couple of college-aged kids to hang out. Josuke was waiting, too, hoping Yukako’s manager wouldn’t kick him out. Again. Bitterly, he felt a sense of deja vu. “No,” he answered her question quickly, screwing up his face with displeasure at the very suggestion. “Why would I do that?”

“I didn’t _mean_ anything by it,” Yukako shot back, frowning and rolling her eyes—but also dropping her broom and walking over to sit in another styling chair closer to Josuke. “Just curious. I didn’t exactly think I would ever do it, either...it seemed too weird. But it ended up happening anyway.” Perhaps subconsciously, she reached up to run her fingers over the now bristly and dramatically short shock of her hair. Josuke was still trying to get used to it, so wildly different than it had been the last time he’d been home, but he supposed it fit her, sharp and confrontational as it was. 

“I was wondering, yeah...why’d _you_ do it?”

“Honestly it was really dumb,” Yukako started explaining, grinning a bit sheepishly. “I kinda had this freakout and convinced myself that Koichi didn’t actually like me—that he just thought I was pretty and stuff. So I just took my dad’s clippers and did it right in my bathroom. And I was _bald_ afterwards—like, even this is after, I think, three months of growing it back now? But anyway...I regretted it pretty much immediately, and I was super upset about it—especially since I was totally wrong, and Koichi was _way_ more concerned about why I’d felt that way in the first place than the fact that I didn’t have hair anymore.” She sighed, sinking back into the styling chair more casually. “But, I dunno, it grew on me eventually.”

Josuke snorted a messy laugh, grinning, unable to help himself. “Oh, I get it—’cuz, like, hair—”

“Wh—” Yukako started, but then got it too and stopped herself with her own laughter, high pitched and ringing like a bell. For a long moment they just laughed, together, until winding down at their own paces and sighing. When Yukako spoke again, her voice was quieter, reflective.

“It’s like...I’d grown so used to having long hair like that, I’d never even really _thought_ about it. It took something dramatic and shocking like that to realize everything I felt about it, even the bad stuff—like how long it always took to dry, or how much it got in my face. But even thinking about all that...it’s still my hair. It’s part of my body, a part I suppose I love, even if it was a hassle like it was. And it’s a part of my body I can change...something I can mold in my own image, not just something I have to let grow and grow out of the assumption that I can’t do anything. I have power over how much it affects my life. Maybe that’s dramatic, but it’s how I feel. I don’t know yet whether I’m gonna grow it back out again or keep it buzzed, but at the moment I guess I’m just...going along with it, and feeling it grow in. Which is sort of nice in its own way—like I’m an android in a sci-fi movie, and my computer brain is getting re-synched with my body.” Yukako’s shoulders drooped as she finished; the whole time she’d spoke, her hand had been rested firmly in what remained of her hair, wandering and navigating the back of her head. “That makes sense, right?” she added brusquely after a lack of response from Josuke, narrowing her eyes.

“Oh—yeah, makes sense,” Josuke quickly assured her, shaken a bit as he snapped back into focus on the conversation. He didn’t know what to make of what Yukako had told him—it made him feel strange all over, thinking about it too much. He supposed he wanted that feeling she’d described, too, to be re-synched, attached and present in himself. Everything that had happened left him feeling somewhere removed from where he’d been before this summer, different than his usual self and weirder as a result. He just wanted to return. But he didn’t know what _he_ could do to make that happen; he couldn’t imagine doing something physical and dramatic like she had, not even in a moment of impulse or weakness. He was too attached—too attached to his hair, and more nebulously too attached to some vague impression of the idea of _how-things-had-been_, a past that maybe would never exist again. He imagined himself in his bathroom, his hair scattered and sad on the tile floor, and tried to anticipate that freedom and calm Yukako had described, but only felt cold and uncomfortable.

“Oh! Just remembered,” Yukako’s voice once again split through his introspection as she hung her apron up and smoothed down her skirt in preparation to leave. “My parents are out of town this weekend so I’m having people over at my house on Friday night. A bunch of people from our class are gonna be there...everyone who’s still in Morioh, that is. Kind of like a reunion, I was thinking, but really casual. Koichi and Okuyasu said they’re coming...can you make it?”

Josuke nodded, still feeling too weird and inside his own head to make words come out of his mouth. That feeling was fading quickly, though, especially hearing what Yukako had said—that seemed like the sort of thing that would do it, a party like that. That was something 18 year olds did, after all, reconnecting with high school friends at house parties. Worse case scenario, he could just get drunk there with everyone else, and force it out that way. Yes, that would help it fade, like it was fading now, his eyes brighter and voice more enthusiastic as he left the salon, arm in arm with Yukako as they made their way down the sidewalk.

But then, sitting at a table outside Rengatei, Josuke caught sight of the backside of someone else’s newspaper, the notice it held: 

_HAVE YOU SEEN US?_ _MINAKO OKURA & SATORU NAKAE...F & M, AGE 19 & 22..._

Upon recognizing the faces—female with short brown hair, male with glasses—he stood and quickly excused himself before stumbling his way into the restroom inside and promptly vomiting. He remained knelt on the cold and unfriendly tile for a long while after, not sad or crying, but far from his body and wondering only how long it would take for this to pass.

—

“Josuke...hurt me...please…”

He was in Reimi’s apartment, trying and failing to help her again. He didn’t even really have a reason for why; he’d wanted to talk to her again, sure, tell her what he now knew, but maybe he’d still been naive enough to believe he’d be able to stop something like this from happening again. Maybe he was selfish, and it just felt good, but he desperately wanted that to be false, so it probably was. He didn’t want to hurt her—he said so in as many words, punctuated by gasps.

“I don’t wanna hurt you—I wanna _help_ you—” He spoke through gritted teeth, moving his hands from where he was gripping the headboard of Reimi’s bed to rest much more gently on her shoulders. “Reimi—I know some of what’s happening. Kira, he’s got your mom and dad, doesn’t he?” Reimi’s face paled instantly, and Josuke’s stomach dropped, but he knew he had to finish now that he’d started. “You gotta do something...you know, go to the police, or—”

“No!” Reimi nearly shrieked, body stiffening violently under Josuke. “No police! I can’t—”

“You have to!” Josuke gripped her shoulders tighter, trying to reassure her and seeming to have the opposite effect. It was like he could _feel_ her heart beating, fast and intense like a small dog, like it was about to give out and leave her dead in his arms. 

“No! No!”

She tried to sit up, scrabbling back against the headboard and clawing at Josuke desperately. He swallowed hard, holding his resolve—saying this, it was the only thing he’d done to help her, _really_ tangibly help her—she had to listen—

“Reimi—”

“_GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY BED!_” She was rapidly spiralling, hyperventilating, fingernails harsh and stinging in Josuke’s back as she tried to shake him off of her.

“Reimi!”

“_GET OUT!!!_” She was sobbing now, nearly incomprehensible with it, hysterical. “Hit me, Josuke, hit me!”

“No—”

“Hit me!”

“_No!”_

Her hands were at his face now, drawing thin red lines down his cheeks, and what he meant to do was grab her wrists to try and defend himself—that was all. Really. What actually happened happened in one fluid and horrible motion: him moving his hands up to her own, guiding them away from his face, her resisting at first, then all of a sudden ragdolling under him and falling to the floor with that momentum, off of the bed and onto the floor headfirst with a dull thud. Josuke fell forward, not expecting her absence, and hit his own head against the back of the bed with a sharp and throbbing pain that radiated through his forehead.

Reimi stopped crying once she was on the ground, becoming all of a sudden quiet and reflective-seeming as she stared up at the ceiling and made no attempt to get up. Josuke quickly took her place, however, beginning to tear up as he looked at her before shutting his eyes tight and sitting with her in silence save for the pitiful sound of his own weeping.

…

“I should probably go, huh.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Afterwards, Josuke sat uncomfortably on the loveseat, staring down at his lap like he’d been called to the principal’s office while Reimi leaned against the hallway wall and didn’t look at him. He _felt_ like a high schooler again, too, in trouble, shivering cold and small and waiting for someone to come and chew him out. Still, he didn’t leave, glued to this spot and this moment happening in it, however terrible.

“You think I’m crazy, right?” The sound of her voice surprised Josuke, and he looked up, assuming this meant he could look at her. She had already turned to look at him without him knowing, expression intense and churning. “I know it. I can tell. But I actually want you to stay. Please don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you—”

“I’m _not_ crazy,” she continued abruptly, on her own track of conversation—she still seemed distressed, but it was subdued, more internalized. “I’m not. I know the difference between right and wrong.”

“That’s good,” Josuke offered in an attempt at reassurance, unsure of what else he could even say. That made Reimi laugh, though the sound was flat and unamused, the opposite of its usual connotation. She laughed for a good moment, mostly to herself as she covered her mouth and looked away from him, and Josuke frowned. “What’s so funny…?”

“It’s like you’re my boyfriend,” she answered, almost too quiet to hear. When she turned back to him, her eyes were wide with a sad, sad sheen. “I think about that sometimes...what it would be like. It helps me. I need you.” 

Josuke expected her to start crying when she said it, like she was in a movie, but her eyes stayed dry and her voice did not waver. Hearing it, so plain and almost casual from her mouth, made the words strike harsh through Josuke and settle unwelcome and burdensome in the very pit of his stomach. He’d been wrong to think he was already in too deep, he realized, lip quivering as the two of them stared at each other; this was it, his hearing her admit that, the ultimate sign that his escape from this _thing_ of his own creation would be painful and long-sought-for, if it ever came at all. He couldn’t process it, at least not here, with her—he stood with an audible strain in his knees and at once felt older again.

“Can I walk you back down to your car?” Reimi asked shyly, shifting her weight from foot-to-foot in an uneven, nervous pattern. Josuke bit his lower lip in his own habit.

“Uh, I actually live pretty close, so I walked here…”

“Can I walk you home, then?” Desperation dripped slowly into her tone, her eyes searching Josuke’s. “It’s really late. And I’d like to see your neighborhood...it feels like so long since I’ve just walked around in Morioh…”

When she said it like that, Josuke knew he couldn’t say no—he gave her a small nod, and a wide smile spread slowly over Reimi’s face. Silently, she slipped a pair of sneakers on with no socks and walked to the door and out into the seventh floor hallway with Josuke quickly in tow.

“It’s a little weird,” Reimi mused she closed and locked the door behind them. “You know so much about me and my life—but if I think about it, I hardly know anything about you—” She started a sigh, but it caught in her throat as she shifted her gaze to look just behind Josuke with an expression of growing confusion...and horror. Josuke’s face screwed up with the same confusion, turning on his heel to face the stairway, where now that he was focusing on it he could hear the distinct sound of someone coming up to the seventh floor. The horror sunk in for him too when he started to see exactly who it was.

The blonde hair was a dead giveaway, of course, but Josuke somehow had known it was Kira even before the top of his head became visible in the stairwell—a result of some horrible sinking feeling in his gut that had taken residence there the second he’d seen Reimi’s face start to change. They’d been caught; there was nothing they could do about it. They both watched him come up the stairs, independently, taking a step apart as if in some attempt to unaffiliate themselves. Other than that, they were frozen. Kira came up the stairs at an even, unrushed pace, shoes tapping in an even and maddening rhythm. Once he, too, realized what was happening, he didn’t look at Reimi; he made direct eye contact with Josuke as he made his way down the hallway towards them, face a mask without emotion. It was the first time there had been a mutual recognition between the two of them, the first time Josuke had not only known but been known by Kira—he flinched first, breaking their eye contact, looking down intently at his ratty sneakers and trying not to shake too violently in them.

Kira did not seem angry as he stood in front of the two of them, or even very confused; his brow furrowed ever so slightly as his gaze shifted away from Josuke and onto Reimi, and he frowned, but there was no context to it, no identifiable emotion. He didn’t hurt Reimi either, or lash out at her, which Josuke had been terrified at the possibility of. Instead he simply glanced back at Josuke for a quick moment before addressing Reimi plainly, as though this were a normal meeting of acquaintances.

“Reimi? Who’s this?”

When he looked back at Josuke again, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and the neutrality fled from his face, subtle but all at once. Josuke swallowed hard; something bad was about to happen. But, just like the last time—hunched in Reimi’s closet, gripping the knife like a lucky charm he couldn't use—he found himself unable to move, frozen, and prepared himself to take all of it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI im not dead
> 
> WARNING IN THIS CHAPTER FOR:  
\- violence  
\- idk there's also some creepy sex stuff a little bit

“He’s my friend...He’s from the neighborhood. We were just talking.” Reimi’s lie tumbled quickly from her mouth pre-prepared, and Kira didn’t seem entirely convinced; he continued looking Josuke over, his gaze physical and burning.

“You’re from the neighborhood,” Kira repeated in a flat tone, leaning back on his heels expectantly. It took Josuke a good moment to realize he’d been addressed, but as soon as he did he nodded with a nervous clearing of his throat.

“Well, what’s your name, neighbor?”

“Josuke.” 

Kira narrowed his eyes again, and Josuke still could not meet them; he diligently traced out the grooves of the hallway carpet, the eyelets on his sneakers, anything he could do other than look up.

“He’s a good kid, Kira—” Reimi began in his defense, taking a step closer towards the two of them, but Kira stifled her immediately.

“Shut up!” He spat, turning around harshly to face her in an energy so opposed to what Josuke had received that he felt like he was about to jump out of his skin. Reimi flinched and covered her head, but Kira kept his hands at his sides, nails curled into his palms. “No one’s talking to you, so shut up!” Josuke finally lifted his head, still shaking, but now with a defensive anger boiling unaccessible somewhere in his gut. It was easier to look at the back of Kira’s head first, and get used to his presence that way. When Kira turned around again, Josuke held his ground, meeting his cold blue eyes as they seemed to continue sizing him up. Reimi shivered in the background, shut up, and made no further sound.

“Do you want to go for a ride?” Kira’s voice came again, seemingly having finished his analysis of Josuke and now making eye contact only with a look of expectation—which was almost a little worse. Josuke couldn’t keep confusion off his face as he tried to make sense of the question. “Uh...no thanks.”

“No thanks,” Kira repeated in what Josuke assumed was supposed to be an imitation of his own voice, low affect and quivering. “What’s that supposed to mean, no thanks?”

“It means I don’t wanna go.”

“Go where?”

There was a trick here, a joke Josuke wasn’t in on. Kira tilted his head to one side like a dog hearing a new word, seeming genuinely confused despite his own suggestion just moments before. Josuke gulped before he answered.

“For a ride.”

Kira grinned wide, but there was no relief for Josuke in the expression; the eyes stayed exactly the same, calculating and unfriendly. “A ride. Why, that sounds like a great idea, neighbor. Let’s go.”

The two of them stood there in suspension, looking at each other, Josuke frozen with his still lingering confusion and Kira with a patience that seemed to be slowly but steadily dwindling. Each stood stock still, expecting the other to move first, until Kira finally did so—stepping forward fast, too fast to do anything about, and grabbing Josuke _hard_ by the collar of his shirt. Josuke wouldn’t have thought he would be so strong, seeing as he was built so slim, but he winced at the burn of his shirt digging into the back of his neck as Kira tugged it forward. Reimi cried out as it happened, the sound echoing and distorting through the empty hallway, but Josuke made no noise himself other than to exhale sharply from his nose. He made a brief, performative attempt to squirm lose, but it had no effect other than to make Kira dig his knuckles harder down against Josuke’s collarbone.

“Get your robe,” Kira demanded as he pulled Josuke against him, addressing Reimi over Josuke’s shoulder and pointing towards the door of her apartment. She gave Josuke a sad look before quickly scurrying inside, leaving him and Kira alone. “Let’s _go_,” he repeated through gritted teeth, and Josuke finally got the joke as he was dragged roughly down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk, every thought focused only on breathing and not bursting into tears.

—

They left the building, Josuke pulled along and Reimi stumbling behind them trying to pick up the slack, and were led to an idling car parked just in front of the Owson. The street was vacant, given the hour of night; there was no one to call for help to, no one to look at the scene unfolding and realize something was very wrong. In the passenger’s seat, Josuke saw as he was unceremoniously shoved into the back seat, sat Grey Shirt Guy, who turned around to give him a vaguely intrigued look before turning to Kira for an explanation. “He’s_ from the neighborhood_,” Kira explained, dripping with sarcasm as he got behind the wheel. Reimi opened the door opposite Josuke and meekly slid into the seat beside him, pushed close together in the cramped space of the back seat. “We’re taking him for a joyride.”

“Alright, Kira,” Grey Shirt Guy replied, buckling his seatbelt. “Where to?” Hearing it for the first time, his voice had such a strange quality to it: smooth and even sounding, unbothered. It revolted Josuke, that this man could be involved with something so horrible and sound so at peace.

Kira thought for a moment, biting his lip before answering. “Hm. Your place, probably. Do you have drinks?”

“I certainly do, Kira.”

“Great.” Kira grinned, an expression that still couldn’t seem to sit right on his face—it split him across, baring grotesquely bright teeth and just a bit too much gum. “Just great. Then we’ll all have drinks with Kosaku. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Kira and Kosaku, who now had a name, both turned towards the backseat to get the opinion of their two hostages. Josuke was beyond answering, but Reimi gave a small nod, fingers tapping incessantly on the seat between them, and that seemed to be enough of a go-ahead for Kira. He continued looking back at them with that grin as he pulled out of the parking spot and got onto the road. “Right. Then let’s go.”

For a joyride, Kira drove incredibly responsibly, obeying the speed limit like his life depended on it—the needle on the speedometer hovered firmly at 40 km/h and did not waver. It was unnerving, to be driving so slowly, like any other car in Morioh if save for the fact that it was around two in the morning. Josuke’s nerves crept just as leisurely, his anticipation of what would happen building and churning him at the same deceivingly relaxed pace. No one spoke, not even Kira and Kosaku to each other—the radio was not playing—the only sound anywhere was the hum of the car itself, alone on the street. Reimi sat stiff beside Josuke, as though she were trying very hard to move as little as possible; it worked well save for the tapping of her fingers and the violent shaking of one foot, her energy being forced out through her extremities. 

All at once a _lot _of sound ripped through the interior of the car, making Josuke seize up and his heart beat fast in his chest. He heard only snippets of it, staticky and with a woman’s voice speaking incomprehensibly, before it was drowned out by laughter from both Kira and Kosaku. “Police call!” Kira crooned, fishing the source of the sound out of an interior pocket of his suit jacket—sure enough, one of those portable police radios Josuke sometimes saw Morioh cops talking into, continuing to jabber away unaddressed.

“Anything happening?” Kosaku replied, sounding only barely interested, and Kira held the radio up to his ear before shaking his head.

“No. Nothing happens in this town. As I’m sure _you_ know.” Kira grinned as he returned the radio to his pocket, and Kosaku laughed in a small sound, turning back to look at the dark expanse of street through the windshield. That previous silence faded back in, as if gleefully re-filling its space, and Josuke bit his lip at a second joke he didn’t get.

Like his voice, Kosaku’s house was irreconcilably normal and unobtrusive—a reasonably sized place for a reasonably sized family, invisibly middle class and blending in with the identical houses that populated the surrounding blocks. It looked like a house Josuke could have passed on his way to school, and maybe it actually was—it was too dark for Josuke to immediately recognize what part of Morioh they were in. He shivered in the backseat as Kira pulled into the driveway.

“This is it,” Kira announced as he pulled the key out of the ignition, and they started to pile out—all but Josuke, who took off his seatbelt and opened the car door only to be grabbed by Kira once again and pulled along up to the door. Josuke tried to crane his neck back to read the address on the house’s mailbox, just to get any information about where he was, but it was dark out, so dark. There was no chance.

Kira knocked on the door with his free hand, and it was opened a moment later by a plain and unassuming woman who seemed to notice Kosaku first. “Darling~!” She chirped, walking out onto the doorsteps and into his arms before giving him a kiss on the cheek. The open door she left behind cast a warm golden light over the lot of them, out of place and inappropriate. “And you’ve brought friends,” she continued, smiling and Kira and Reimi before making eye contact with Josuke. Josuke at once remembered advice his mom had given him when he was a kid, the kind he supposed every kid gets but never ends up having to use: _if anyone tries to take you somewhere, try to scream and make a scene. But if you can’t, try and ask for help with your eyes—look for another mom, or someone who looks like a mom, and ask for help with your eyes. She’ll know._ Josuke tried to look as scared as possible on purpose, eyes wide and starting to water as he stared at her, but it had no effect. No effect at all—her expression remained entirely unchanged, not parsing what must have been the obvious sign he was in trouble, as though he was not even there at all. Or, more horrifyingly, as though he was expected and supposed to be here.

The interior of the house, too, was completely average: a spacious first floor with a staircase going up, a living room, a kitchen which the woman disappeared into after letting them inside. The light Josuke had seen came from a few lamps in the living room, evenly filling the space with it like a blanket, and was joined harmoniously by the hint of fluorescent from the kitchen. All in all, a perfectly normal house. The only thing that stood out was a wooden door down one of the hallways—only because it had an extra lock attached to it, and because once the woman returned from the kitchen and poured drinks for everyone, she lingered by it and took the seat closest to its place in the hallway.

“Thank you, Shinobu,” Kira murmured as she handed him a glass, nodding to her. Josuke repeated it as she gave him one, too, voice shaking with another attempt to reach out now that she had a name:

“Th-Thank you, Shinobu.”

He looked into her eyes, and she into his, but there was still nothing but a polite housewife's smile.

Josuke was waiting for Kira to sit down, because he knew that then Kosaku and Reimi would sit down, and then (probably) _he_ would be able to sit down too. That moment didn’t come, and the four of them remained standing in the living room and holding their drinks awkwardly (all but Reimi, who had politely refused when offered a glass by Shinobu). Josuke stood somewhat apart from them, remaining firmly in the spot where Kira had finally let go of him, and Kosaku stood close to Kira with his body angled towards him. Kira had his arm around Reimi, holding her at his side. Josuke took note of these things, these logistics, and treated them with the utmost importance—it was easier to think about than anything else. 

“Kira, this really is such a lovely surprise, that you’ve come by with your friends,” Kosaku mused in his same smooth and unaffected voice. He sounded almost sleepy, vocally nodding off, and Josuke started to feel tired even just listening to him. “You really can feel free to visit us anytime you’d like. Our home is your home. I’m sure Shinobu would agree with me.” Kosaku glanced at her from where she sat at the other side of the living room, and she nodded.

“So _suave_,” Kira replied in a breathy, almost awed tone, shaking his head at Kosaku like he was in disbelief. “Goddamn, Kosaku, you are one suave son of a bitch. I don’t know how you do it. How’ve you been? Work treating you okay?”

“Oh, fine, Kira, just fine.” Kosaku smiled, a lazy expression that rolled out slowly across the width of his face as he limply raised his glass. “Let’s drink, now. We ought to have a toast...here’s to your health, Kira.”

Kira rolled his eyes. “Let’s drink to something else.” He turned his head slightly to look at Reimi, holding her tighter against his side and leering at her like a pervert as his fingers tapped against her shoulder. “Let’s drink to _fucking_.” The vulgar word fell uncomfortably out of his mouth, seeming wrong in his voice, and Josuke felt bile rise in his throat. Reimi didn’t react to this beyond a pitiful shiver, a mask of worry etched deep and frozen onto her features. She was wavering on her legs, as though she’d have fallen over were Kira not holding onto her. “Say ‘here’s to your fuck, Kira.’”

“If you like, Kira,” Kosaku replied, a vague amusement crossing his features. “Here’s to your fuck.” It was even stranger in his voice, incongruent. “Cheers.” He clinked his glass against Kira’s and took a sip from it, closing his eyes for a brief moment. 

“Cheers,” Kira repeated under his breath, quickly freeing Reimi from his grasp and following suit. She took a few steps away from him and towards Josuke, and ended up in the space between them, trying not to be obvious. “Wow. _Suave_.” Kira turned away from Kosaku to face Josuke and the women in the room, leaning back against a wall of the living room and holding his glass loosely in one hand. “Hey, we all love Kosaku. Right?” He raised his glass quickly, beer sloshing dangerously close up to the rim. “Here’s to Kosaku!”

“Here’s to Kosaku,” came the stitled duet of Shinobu and Reimi’s voices, the former sighing like a schoolgirl and the latter shaky and hesitant from how long she’d gone without speaking. Josuke did not join in—he felt like if he tried to drink anything or open his mouth, he’d surely puke. He straightened his back and hoped to go unnoticed, but Kira made eye contact with him and frowned. “Hey, neighbor,” he addressed in a low tone, before promptly taking three steps forward and socking Josuke right in the chin.

It had been fucking _years_ since Josuke’d been punched—certainly not since high school, and even then the fight’s he’d gotten in were mostly harmless, at their worst resulting in a few bruises or a detention for causing a scene. This was different. There wasn’t even pain at first—just vibration, and the sequenced _THUNK-CRACK_ of Kira’s fist landing and Josuke’s teeth connecting through the inside of his cheek as his head swung upwards to look at the ceiling. Pain radiated out bright and winging from his jaw, throbbing up through his face—there was no sound for a moment, save for Reimi crying out and Shinobu giggling. His mouth filled with blood from where he’d bitten himself, and he swallowed it down as he winced.

“I said, here’s to Kosaku,” Kira growled as he gripped the collar of Josuke’s shirt again, and Josuke understood, staring firmly at the floor and opening his mouth in an attempt to speak; his tongue was numb and heavy in his mouth as he tried to regain his bearings.

“Here’s to Kosaku...”

“Be polite!” Kira pointed two fingers at him aggressively, dangerously close to one of Josuke’s eyes. Josuke looked up, directly at Kosaku, and mustered up what faux jovial energy he could—

“Here’s to Kosaku!” 

His voice hitched from fear and pain as he shakily raised his glass, and Shinobu laughed again. Kira seemed satisfied enough by this, letting go of Josuke and taking a step back towards Kosaku with a shit-eating grin.

“See that?” Kira gloated, eyes darting back towards Josuke for a quick second before he continued speaking to Kosaku. “I can make him do anything I please.” It was impossible to determine whether or not Kosaku was impressed by this; he pursed his lips as he returned Josuke’s eye contact, raising an eyebrow before taking a few steps towards him at a leisurely pace. Up close, his calm became less bizarre and more intimidating, a threat. He set his drink down before he spoke, close enough for Josuke to feel—and smell—his breath.

“Thank you for the toast, neighbor. That was very nice.” Kosaku gave Josuke a tight lipped smile; even though Josuke was a couple of inches taller than him, he felt firmly towered over, and did not reply, still afraid and still in pain. Kosaku’s smile promptly receded back into his face, and he pouted as he looked over Josuke before speaking in a mockingly concerned tone. “Oh, did Kira hurt your little face?”

Before Josuke could even consider a response, as confused and unintelligible as it probably would have been, Kosaku promptly punched him in the stomach. Josuke wheezed and doubled over, caught off guard—Shinobu laughed again. Kosaku broke his low affect to grin, his first and only real expression pleasure at the pain he’d caused Josuke, which was perhaps the worst way it could have been. “There. Feel better?” Kosaku quipped, ruffling Josuke’s hair as he was bent over, but as he said it he turned towards the others in the room, making a joke for them. And they laughed at it, together, all but Reimi, who was still so, so quiet.

As the joke faded, Kosaku took the opportunity to walk back towards Kira, leaving Josuke alone and gasping to get his breath back as he remained hunched over. “Now, Kira, I think you have something for me,” Kosaku skillfully filled the gap left by the laughter with a business-like tone, lightly tapping Kira on the arm before turning to address the rest of the room. “Will you excuse us both for a moment, please?”

Kira nodded, brow furrowing as he seemed to remember. “Right, right. Excuse us.” The two of them walked into the kitchen, head close together to speak privately, but not before Kira turned to Shinobu and addressed her bluntly. “Let Reimi see her folks,” he ordered over his shoulder, and Shinobu nodded and quickly stood. She turned towards Reimi—who gave a small whimpering sound of surprise at Kira’s demand, mouth hanging open as if she, like Josuke, was trying to breathe again—and lifted her skirt to reveal a red pocket garter from which she pulled a key. At the same time as Kira and Kosaku disappeared into the kitchen, Shinobu led Reimi down the hall and opened up the door with the extra lock, following Reimi inside. Then Josuke was alone in the living room.

His face hurt. His stomach hurt. He knew he should have probably taken this opportunity to run away, but he took it instead to sit down, legs aching. There was so much to take in that he couldn’t process it and come up with solutions at the same time. He was alone—and yet at the same time, from where he sat, he could see in his peripheral both sides of action in the house, unavoidable. In the kitchen Kira was handing Kosaku a large wad of bills and talking animatedly as Kosaku slipped the money into his pocket; in the hallway, bright light was spilling from the still open door, the shadows of multiple figures shifting and interacting and melding into one another. He could _hear_ the sound of each space, too, whether that be Kira’s disgusting gushing to Kosaku:

“What a _find_ she was, Kosaku...how are you so good at this…? Worth every penny, I’ll be the first to tell you...so soft...and God, she was such a _slut_, too...she let me paint her nails...she _let_ me…so filthy…!”

Or the mingle of human voices from the hallway, intercut with sobbing and the sound of a large dog panting:

“Mom…! Dad…!”

“Shh, don’t cry, sweetie, don’t cry…”

“Oh, God…!”

“Everything’s okay...everything’s okay…”

“Whatever happens, Reimi, just know that your mother and I love you very much…”

Josuke couldn’t take more than a few moments of it all. He clapped his hands over his ears and curled tighter over himself, trying his best to blink away tears.

Kira and Kosaku reemerged from their private moment first, Kira fidgeting and impatient as he messed with the sleeves of his jacket—his cheeks were tinged just slightly red, like he was buzzed, or maybe worked up from the _reminiscing_ he’d been doing. He made eye contact with Josuke immediately, panting slightly as he spoke.

“Hey, neighbor! Come on, get up.”

“Huh?” Josuke looked up at him, eyes still stinging slightly. Shinobu and Reimi reemerged from the hallway as he did so, lingering in the corner of his eyes—Shinobu hummed pleasantly to herself as she closed and locked the door once more, and Reimi just stood still, downcast and reflective as Shinobu guided her towards the living room. 

“We’re going for our joyride now,” Kira explained, turning towards Shinobu and Reimi as they approached. “You ladies want to come too, right?” Shinobu nodded eagerly; there was no response from Reimi, who continued staring off into space even as Kira frowned and walked towards her, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders. “What? No smile for Kira?”

Apparently not, because he sighed and rolled his eyes as Reimi’s expression stayed exactly the same. “Whatever. Let’s hit the road.” Kira grabbed the back of Reimi’s robe and pulled her towards the door, Shinobu following shortly behind without bothering to put shoes on. Josuke stood shakily and started to head for the door himself, thinking he was being allowed to walk of his own accord, but Kosaku quickly came behind him and grabbed him by the back of his shirt, dragging him into Kira’s car like a bag of flour once again.

—

They drove for a long, _long_ time. Josuke was sure there was no way they could still be in Morioh—he knew they’d gotten on the highway at some point—but there were no buildings he could use as a landmark, no light but the reflection of the high beams on the road in front of them. They went at that same maddeningly as before, too, meandering forward into the night; Josuke was scared out of his mind.

Reimi was in the passenger’s seat up near Kira, now, with Josuke squished in the back between Kosaku and Shinobu. That made it worse, too, being further away from her. Every so often she would turn around in her seat and look at him, nervously, but then Kosaku or Shinobu would glare at her, and she’d quickly turn away once more.

“Where are we going?” Reimi asked after who knew how long driving, voice hesitant and low. She turned herself towards Josuke as she said it, and he traced the shape of her mouth making each sound, holding onto it before she turned to hear Kira’s answer.

“I’m taking your neighbor out to the country,” Kira chirped in explanation, keeping his eyes firmly on the road as they continued to drive. His voice was still strange and impatient as he’d been, and Josuke could see his fingers jumping and twitching against the steering wheel. He didn’t turn to Josuke either as he spoke, speaking to the windshield instead. “Fresh air is good for young men like him. You like the outdoors, don’t you?”

Finally—_finally_—they pulled off of the highway, rolling onto an exit road and then a dirt road and then into a tense idling, engine still running for a long while. Josuke at once craned his neck to try and look out the windows, but it was fruitless. The car’s headlights briefly illuminated what seemed to be a swath of tall grass, ripping in the night wind, but that light was gone just as soon as Josuke recognized it. Other than that, only the now-distant highway’s lights shined, leaving them in the dark. This _couldn’t_ be real; it was the sort of thing that would happen in a movie, or at most to someone else on the news. Not to _him_. But he was here, and Kira was taking the key out of the ignition, and they were parking, and Kosaku was elbowing him in the ribs and making him wince. “He asked you a question.”

“Huh?” Josuke replied, blinking away the stab of pain in the few extra seconds it took for him to process what Kira had even said. “Uh...y-yeah, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Kira repeated in a wavering joke of how scared Josuke was, cracking the joints of his shoulders as he turned around in the seat to address him head on. Strange as it had been talking to him like that, Josuke supposed he preferred it—preferred it to looking Kira in the eyes, especially now, with how on edge he seemed. “I was just the same when I was your age.” Kira paused, and smiled before he spoke again: an expression with too much gum and not enough teeth. “You’re like me.”

Josuke didn’t know what to even say in response to that—_you’re like me_. It wasn’t true, it was an insult in his mind, in the rational part of it, but above all it just made him feel like crying. And he _did_ cry, a little, frantically trying to blink away the burning pin-pricks of threatening tears. If anyone else in the car noticed, they didn’t mention it, leaving Josuke strange and vulnerable near-crying in that middle seat and staring forward. He stared forward, unable to force any other action out of himself, before Kira narrowed his eyes.

“Hey!” He barked, making Josuke flinch and Reimi mirror the action on instinct. “What are you looking at!?” 

“N-Nothing—”

“Well, don’t look at me!” He pointed at Josuke harshly, chest rising and falling in an anxious, worked-up rhythm. “Don’t you _look _at me. I strike when I see the whites of the eyes.” He leaned forward, getting closer, close enough that Josuke could start to see the details of his skin in the low light: pores, the lines under his eyes, the dust remnant of what was once a layer of foundation. He could see the whites of _Kira’s_ eyes well enough, too, intense and bulging slightly, and Josuke leaned back, unnerved. There was no telling what was about to happen—Josuke braced to get hit again—he wondered if this, momentarily, was how it felt to be Reimi all the time. But for all Kira’s talk, he didn’t strike; he yielded and leaned away from Josuke, eyeing him up one last time before turning his attention to the passenger’s seat. “Isn’t that right...Reimi.”

It was not a question. It was a statement, and a statement Reimi seemed to agree with, nodding and leaning just barely away from Kira. “Yes, that’s right,” she replied, voice barely more than a whisp. She looked to Josuke for a split second as she did so, eyes wide, like she was warning him: _it’s going to happen again_. Sure enough, Kira took his lower lip between his teeth before wrenching one of Reimi’s hands from the white knuckle grip it had been bracing her with on the headrest of the passenger’s seat. 

“Come here...come here…”

In an instant, it was as though no one else in the car existed—Kira looked at her and only her, eyes shining with some sick distortion of lust, kissing the knuckles of her hand and running his tongue up the length of her fingers. Reimi grimaced, sucking in a wavering breath that seemed not to be released but instead bunch up in her shoulders and keep her tense like she was ready to spring away the next chance she got. No one in the car spoke; Shinobu did not even laugh. She and Kosaku were silent and still on either side of Josuke, a stark contrast to himself where he fidgeted incessantly and scratched at the polyester of the seatbelt. That anxious vinyl scrape was the only sound from within the car, save for the damp and upsetting noise of Kira sucking on Reimi’s fingers and groaning quietly. Josuke tried to make the sound as loudly as he could.

Josuke was scared—terrified—his stomach was doing olympic fucking vaults over itself, and he was certain he was seconds away from puking all over the car’s upholstery. But he was mad, too, and that anger was quickly matching his fear, threatening to eclipse it. He was mad at Shinobu and Kosaku, sure, for how complacent and unbothered they seemed; their only expressions were a childish boredom on Shinobu’s face and the vaguest hint of an amused smirk on Kosaku’s. More than that, he was mad at Kira—_furious_. Even beyond the obvious, he was mad at how Kira clearly thought he was untouchable. In his mind he must have felt entitled to Reimi and to her body, enough to do this here with no qualms. Right now, they had to just be pulled right off of a highway exit...though Josuke knew it wouldn’t happen, any old car could drive past and see them parked there, could notice something strange. This possibility meant nothing. And why should it have? After all, luck had been on Kira’s side for the last five years; no force of the universe had given him what he deserved, had shown more than a pervasive ambivalence towards Reimi’s torture. Even now, two real flesh-and-blood people were sitting, watching him torture here, _knowing_, and doing _nothing_. Kira slid his unoccupied hand into the folds of Reimi’s robe, and all at once Josuke felt he really understood what people meant when they talked about _seeing red_; his voice left his mouth before he could even process it, echoing far away from him.

“Leave her alone!”

Kira stopped and turned to him, and Josuke’s fist flew forward towards him in the same angry fugue, unable to be stopped by any force of his own sense of self-preservation.

The punch missed by just enough of a margin to be meaningless, but made just enough contact for Josuke to know that he was fucked. His fist wavered and struck the very corner of Kira’s mouth, slipping awkwardly across his cheek and dragging his lips momentarily into a lopsided, toothy grimace. After taking what little recovery he needed from the pitiful blow, Kira just stared at Josuke, and for a moment he almost looked impressed. That expression was soon gone, taken over by a slowly but steadily distorting anger that twisted the features of his face into a fuming mask.

“Out of the car.” Kira swallowed hard before he spoke in a wavering, measured tone. He was _mad_, but a contained mad, held back barely, _just barely_, by a thin membrane that already was straining with the force of it. The silence that filled the car sat squarely on Josuke’s chest like a kettlebell, germinating and infecting every passenger. It was as if everyone else—not just Josuke, out of a physical vice grip of anxiety—was holding their breath—until the membrane snapped, and Kira’s shout rattled through the air at a comparatively ear-splitting volume. 

“OUT OF THE CAR! Kosaku, _get him out of the car!”_

And then everything happened at once, a whirlwind of energy as though to make up for that horrifying moment of stillness—Kosaku was reaching over Josuke’s lap to unbuckle his seatbelt, roughly linking arms with him and using his other hand to open the car door before pushing it open with his foot, Kira was shaking and jumping out of his own seat, Shinobu was laughing her head off. Reimi was sobbing, leaning forward over the car’s center console to plead with Kira from the passenger’s seat: “He didn’t mean anything by it, Kira! Stop! Stop!”

“Shut up! Shut up,” Kira hissed, not looking back at Reimi as he stood fidgeting incessantly next to the car. He trained all his attention onto Josuke as Kosaku dragged him out of the car and onto the rough dirt terrain. The wind was cold, so much colder than Josuke would have thought before. “Take him over there—take him over by the edge and hold him. Shinobu—” Kira turned on his heel to address her, kicking up a cloud of dust just barely visible in the dark. He shuddered violently, as if taken over for a short moment, before addressing her in a low tone. “I want you.”

Inside the car, Shinobu grinned wide, stretching forward into the front of the car to fiddle with the radio. A cassette player clicked to life as Shinobu left the car as well, abandoning Reimi inside in favor of walking around to the front of the vehicle in order to quickly climb on top of the hood and scramble onto the roof. As the music began, she began to swing her hips in time and raise her arms over her head in a leisurely, unbothered dance; Josuke did not recognize the song until he heard its lyrics.

_“Any time I need to see your face I just close my eyes_

_And I am taken to a place where your crystal mind…”_

Reimi began to sob even harder, covering her face with her hands.

Josuke tried desperately to make eye contact with her, get some sort of connection, but Kosaku had dragged him a few feet away from the car, pinning both of his arms behind his face with an alarming strength. Though Josuke still had no clue _where_ they were, it was as if he could feel the ‘edge’ Kira had described—a nearby and ever-present sensation of being about to fall. He tried and failed _considerably_ to get his breathing under control as Kira walked towards the two of them, making eye contact with Josuke and shaking his head as he approached at a brisk, even pace. He was getting lightheaded already.

“You are lucky to be alive,” Kira informed him once he was only a short distance away, before punching Josuke squarely in the stomach—a quick and impulsive-seeming motion, as though he couldn’t help it. Josuke wheezed and slumped forward as far as he could while being restrained, the pain of the blow Kosaku had given him at the house coursing back with a vengeance to meet its new accomplice. He coughed, and something wet and unappealing expelled itself from his mouth and onto the ground just in front of him—it was too dark to see whether it was vomit or blood, and Josuke was too wracked with pain to feel the difference. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t good. Kira gripped his face hashly with one broad hand, squishing his cheeks as he forced Joskue’s head up to make eye contact with him.

“Look at me,” Kira began, each word heavy and forced out through an unnerving calm—like he had wrapped all the way around anger back to the beginning. “Don’t be a good neighbor to her. I’ll send you a love letter. Straight from my heart. Do you know what a love letter is?” Before Josuke could (attempt) to answer on his own, Kira gripped his face tighter and shook his head back and forth violently, a grin on his face like one of those elementary school kids who used to burn ants under magnifying glasses. His free hand snuck into one pocket, fishing around before taking out a pen and holding it up close to one of Josuke’s ears. In the other ear, Kosaku chuckled in a sound Josuke could feel the heat from on his skin. 

_ This is the bomb_, Josuke’s brain provided without hesitation, a stone cold fear shooting through his bloodstream at a dizzying pace. _This is the bomb he’s made it look like a pen but it’s the bomb or maybe Kosaku put the bomb on your back just now and this is the detonator he’s going to blow you up he’s going to kill you you are going to die die DIE!!!_

The thought was nonsensical, unsupported by anything but a single memory—but Josuke could not shake it, and it made him afraid. Never in his life had he been afraid like this—afraid to die in a situation where it was entirely plausible, where there was a very real and immediate chance of it _actually happening_. No other idea stood a chance of breaking through as he saw Kira’s thumb slide over the top of the pen: just that he was going to die, just as suddenly and horribly as that woman and the man on the bike, and Reimi was going to see him die.

Josuke tensed violently as Kira clicked the pen...to produce nothing but the expected sound, and Kosaku quickly blowing a puff of air into his ear in what he bitterly assumed was an imitation of an explosion.

He thought Kira would laugh, but he just kept grinning, completely silent before he elaborated in a hushed, reeling voice. “_A love letter is a fucking bomb_. You get a love letter from me, you are gone _forever!_ Do you understand, Josuke? I’ll send you _straight to hell!_” His anger broke the membrane once more as he spoke, spilling out as Kira began to shout over the steadily increasing night wind. Kosaku lifted Josuke’s arms over his head and held them up in the air;he was so _fucking_ strong somehow, with a vice like grip, and Josuke was surprised he didn’t just lift him off of the ground too while he was at it. Josuke was wide open, shirt riding up slightly to expose just a sliver of his stomach to the cold air—that’s when Kira went to town.

In an instant his hands were on him, beating him with his fists, scratching at him with his fingernails and leaving stinging, bloody lines down Josuke’s skin. Brutal and fast—there was a brutality to it that Josuke could not have been able to anticipate, even more so than what he’d seen that night in Reimi’s closet, which now felt like an episode of a television show or something else fake. No part of his body was off limits. Josuke could feel his left eye swell up and his nose begin to bleed as Kira struck his face with that same brutality, and he began to weep, silently; not from the pain, but simply from the fact that tomorrow morning—if there _was_ a tomorrow morning—his mom would see him like this, and she would be upset. That was all he could think of, that strange and out-of-place worry. 

At one point Josuke tilted his head back, or maybe just let it fall back and stay there following the result of some blow he could no longer differentiate from others. There were no stars in the sky—there never were in Morioh, too close to the light pollution of S City for any to peek through. Josuke did not know where they were exactly, but he felt so strongly that they _had_ to be in Morioh, somewhere, somehow. Morioh all at once was a body, was _his_ body, a body under fire and in danger—a body expelling a virus, killing itself in the process. Josuke imagined that he could see those past five years of Reimi’s life in one moment, and imagined five more years following this singular horrible moment, that _process_. It was easier to do the work and create some philosophical reasoning than to admit that sometimes bad things happen for no reason.

He supposed he could have tried to kick at Kira, lash back at him, but there was no point—there would have been no point. All his strength had been sapped out of him, replaced by aching, and he was certain he would have fallen over by this point had Kosaku not been holding him up. 

All the time, a few feet away on the car’s roof, Shinobu kept dancing, and the song kept playing—maybe it had looped, or maybe all of this had taken only moments, despite how Josuke’s human-punching-bag-treatment seemed to go on and on and on:

_“Oh, I want you, I don’t know if I need you, but_

_Oh, I’d die to find out…”_

And all the time Reimi kept sobbing, calling out:

“Kira, stop it! Stop it! Stop it, Kira, please! Kira!”

But her words were carried away by the wind and lost on his ears, or maybe just ignored.

Kira finished as abruptly as he’d started, taking a step away from Josuke and leaning over slightly to catch his breath. As frightening as he’d been when he was calm and composed, his appearance now—disheveled and panting, hair sticking to his forehead with sweat—inspired a new and different sort of terror that was no lesser. He turned away from Josuke like he was disgusted, scoffing and wiping the blood on his knuckles from Josuke’s nose onto his pants, for only a moment before swiveling back around to stare at him with an expression of plain and simple anger...and then shifting into something insidious and less well-identified as he looked Josuke up and down with a shudder.

Over Josuke’s shoulder, Kira and Kosaku made eye contact, and some understanding passed silently between them—Kosaku dropped his hold on one of Josuke’s arms with a quiet laugh, replacing his now unoccupied arm around Josuke’s neck to choke him in the crook of his elbow. Josuke’s released arm was briefly allowed to hang limp and defeated at his side, before being quickly picked up again by Kira, held out to its full length to fill the gap between the two of them. Kira did not smile as he made eye contact with Josuke, as he grabbed his hand by the wrist and lifted it up towards his face...as he ran his fingers over Josuke’s knuckles, and as he brought the hand up to his lips and kissed the tip of the index finger before sliding it into his mouth.

Now, only now, did Josuke scream. He hadn’t made a sound the whole time Kira had been punching and scratching the hell out of him, save for the occasional wheeze or groan of pain against his own will. He screamed now, though, watching Kira start sucking on his fingers—and it was a _real_ scream. Not the sort of sound you could reproduce on a whim if someone asked you to scream, but a scream of unadulterated reaction to total, primal terror. It was a high pitched sound, terrified and weak; on some distant and dissociated level Josuke was embarrassed by it, though he had no capacity to try and stop himself. It was _loud_, too. All it would have taken was a single car, one lone night owl on his way back from S City to swoop in and put an end to everything, but the street was as empty as the night sky above, just as naturally.

This was _bad._ This was _worse_, so much worse than what had been happening before—Josuke felt his whole stomach drop as bile rapidly flooded his throat, as though his whole body was violently readjusting in response. There was no new pain inflicted, no blood or black eyes, but this was _scary _and _awful_ on a deep, intrinsic level that Josuke didn’t think he would have been able to put into words—that couldn’t be captured by any sound other than that scream.

_What’s he doing? What the fuck is he doing??_

The thought repeated in his mind over and over, unattended, pacing back and forth and dragging its feet along the floor of his brain. There was nothing to do—Josuke kept screaming, until he felt his fingers hit the back of Kira’s throat, until he felt Kosaku’s arm tighten around _his _throat, and until he suddenly got very dizzy and blissfully, thankfully, completely slipped into unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> josuke: *getting the shit beat out of him*  
shinobu in the background: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4stf8nfRq8>
> 
> but on a more sappy note bc its valentines day!!! (when im writing this rn at least the publishing date might come up as the 15th lmao) i just really want to thank everyone who's been reading along and leaving such nice comments and everything. School has been really tough lately w/ starting the new semester (which is highkey why this chapter is so late) and I've been really close to just giving up on this project more than a few times, but seeing people excited about it and wanting to read more makes *me* excited about it too and motivated to keep writing. I've never kept with a multichapter fic for this long before (i checked and this thing is currently ~10k words longer than animal farm!!! damb!!!) and I wouldn't have been able to do it w/o the support from you guys.
> 
> so yeah uh *puts mic down* love y'all hope you all had great valentine's days


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi!!!! i'm not dead!!!!!  
things have been uhhUhh Intense bc i had to move out of my dorm and back home with........everything that's happening............  
and on a lighter note the site i was using for a transcript of blue velvet to work from went down 😔  
i haven't given up on this fic yet though!! and i'll (idealistically) be updating more frequently since i'm in self-isolation lmao  
ok i'll shut up now but hope u all enjoy <333

_“Hell—...Morioh! Today is looking like ano—...nd sunny day, with highs in th—...and a cool breeze hitting once night falls…”_

Josuke opened his eyes, and before anything else realized there were insects crawling all over him—nondescript little black bugs that pricked his battered and bruised skin with their horrible spindly legs. He had to solve the problem before he could become a person again, jumping up with no small amount of protest from his aching body and frantically brushing them off in a low-set and primitive burst of forced adrenaline.

He had not known where he was when he had blacked out who knows how many hours ago—it had been dark then, and it was light now. In the light he could now recognize the place, sighing with relief at the familiar surroundings; he had been taken to the agricultural area just outside Morioh, not too far at all, though it wouldn’t be possible to walk himself back even without considering his injuries. A strange peace washed over him as he slowly recognized the outlines of irrigation trenches he’d driven past before, the crops waving in a similar wind to last night, even the strange sound he’d heard which had woken up in the first place: snippets of car radios from the highway, fading in and out as they passed by.

Having pieced together his location, Josuke began then to do an inventory of his body, too—to find out exactly what had happened to him and try to piece it together with the messy whirlwind of events that last night had turned into while he was knocked out. His whole throat felt tender and vulnerable as he cautiously ran his hands down it—that was probably from Kosaku and his chokehold. The bite marks on his fingers and weird circular bruises on his wrists were probably Kira—Christ, it looked like the guy had even tried to take a chunk out of one of his palms. Though he couldn’t see it, he could tell he had at least one black eye, and his nose was worse for wear but probably not broken—_hopefully_ not broken. Same story for his ribs, though one or two made him wince to touch. His jacket was in the dirt a few feet away from him, but his clothes were intact save for a few dirt and blood stains, and no one had stolen his phone or wallet. That was good. That was _really_ good. But his hair was down, hanging limp and knotted at his shoulders, scalp itching with dirt and debris, and somehow _that_ above everything else was the worst, scariest, most violating thing that had happened to him. He sat back down and had a good cry about it, watching cars continue to rush by on the highway.

As he did so, a bird flew by over the highway, and it was like a reset button, something important—a sign for him, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was supposed to mean.

He stood again, reborn, ready to get down to business. First order of business—making what would likely be the most awkward phone call home of his life, so he could get someone to come pick him up and so he could get back into Morioh. He prayed to God that Jotaro would pick up—he already knew his mom would be hysterical. Flipping his phone open, his brow furrowed to find he had a voicemail: a robo-call from the photo place, telling him his pictures had been developed and were ready for pick up. It had come sometime last night—there was something funny about that, in a dark and horrible sense. It had seemed so long ago that he’d sent them off, that he’d even taken them...but he was relieved at the news that they were ready, letting his shoulders drop the tension they’d been holding. The photos were _proof_, after all, real cold hard evidence that could _fix_ things once and for all; even after what had happened to Josuke, he had the photos, now, and he could still _win_. He let that feeling settle warm in his chest as he punched in his home phone number and listened to the ring on the other end.

Thankfully it _was _Jotaro who picked up, and thankfully he had enough common sense to walk out of the kitchen and wrap the phone’s cord around the corner with him into the living room—Josuke had pulled that same move more than a few times when he was taking a phone call his mom didn’t necessarily need to hear. Josuke could still hear her, though; “Josuke? Is that Josuke!?” echoed through the speakers, unanswered, growing quieter as Jotaro presumably left the room. Josuke grimaced, guilt worming its way into his stomach, before swallowing hard and beginning this minor trainwreck of a phone call.

“Hello…? Yeah, yeah I’m fine...Seriously, I’m f—well, tell _her_ I’m fine...I know. I know, I know...I just need you to come pick me up. I’m out by the agricultural area...I don’t wanna talk about it...I _know_ that. I can deal with her...just come pick me up, okay? Please?...okay...I know. Thanks. See you soon.”

When Jotaro came twenty minutes later to pick Josuke up, he kept his word and didn’t ask a single question, despite the vague expression of concern that crossed his face as he saw the state Josuke was in. He just drove, in silence the whole ride back, and let the radio play inanely to substitute the undesired conversation. Josuke’s mom wasn’t as willing to let it slide that easily—

“Oh my _GOD!_”

“I don’t wanna talk about i—”

“You just about scared me half to death! Sneaking out in the middle of the night like that and coming back all bruised up—what’s gotten into you!?” Even though she spoke harshly, Josuke knew it was just because she was scared; she was crying, and she hugged him tightly as he came through the door like she meant to hold onto him forever so this would never happen again. A quick stab of guilt flashed its way through him, stronger even than the pain his mom’s hug was unknowingly putting on his already suffering ribs. “Who did this to you, huh? And don’t try and tell me you just fell down or something because I _know_ what falling down looks like oh my god your _nose! _I hope it’s not broken I’m gonna call and make you an appointment right now so you can get checked out maybe they can get you in today it’s still pretty early an—”

“I _said_ I don’t wanna talk about it!”

His mom’s panic put him way too on edge, and his outcry came out more violent than he intended—same with his writhing his way out of his mom’s grip and his anxious dart down the hall to his room. Normally he’d never lash out like that, and he felt bad the second he did it, and the second he saw her face fall behind him as he left...but hearing her reaction, it made it seem so much more _real_ and horrible, that now it wasn’t just something that happened in his life but something that was part of her life as his mom. Her panic was making _him_ panic, too. Once he shut his door behind him louder than he’d planned to, he sat down on his bed and buried his face in his hands, body shivering with incoming tears as he really finally processed what had happened. He had been abducted—he had been beaten up—he had passed out, and who _knows_ what had happened then—he had been left in the dirt off a highway exit, probably for dead—and he had pushed Reimi, and she had fallen off the bed and onto the floor and hit her head, and that somehow was the thing that made him cry the hardest.

—

“Whaddya mean, you’re lucky to be able to call me?”

Okuyasu’s voice rang worried already, tinny through the shit speaker of Josuke’s cellphone where it was hunched up against his ear as he pedaled his way down to the photo place. His mom had listened to him enough to not push anymore about what had happened last night, but still said she wouldn’t let him use her car the rest of the time he was home—he supposed that was fair enough. “Things got kinda outta hand last night,” Josuke sighed and lowballed into the phone, taking an unsteady sharp right on his bike. “But I know a lot of stuff now that could help Keicho get things figured out at the station. And I’m on my way right now to get the photos—I’m gonna bring them to him as soon as I have ‘em. Things are starting to get sorted out...I think all of this is going to end soon. I can _feel_ it. It has to...b-but, anyway, I wanted to call so I could warn you, I guess...some of the things I gotta say to Keicho might get you in trouble.”

“Forget me, dude. You gotta tell him what you gotta tell him.” Okuyasu’s voice went all serious for a moment, lower in tone. “Really...even if I get in trouble you should tell him everything. All this stuff—you’re right. We’re _this_ close! So don’t worry about me at all. I can handle it if Keicho gets a little pissed at me, promise.” Josuke felt his heart flutter in a strange response to how set Okuyasu seemed in his self-sacrifice—Keicho’s rage could be no joke—and he wobbled a little on his bike as his own gut reaction threw him off.

“Okay...I promise I’ll try and not mention you though.”

“It doesn’t matter, man. I mean it. See you soon, okay? I _wanna_ see you soon. I’m still hella worried...you said things got outta—”

“It’s not important right now,” Josuke rushed out, wincing as he felt the bubbling of his same nerves rearing up eagerly in his ribcage. “I’m coming to Yukako’s party tonight. You’re gonna be there too, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I am.”

“Cool. I’ll see you there, then—I wanna see you too. Everything’s just been...a lot, I guess. I dunno. Okay I can see the photo place so I gotta hang up now but can I come over to your house at like eight and then we can go to Yukako’s house together?” Okuyasu made a little affirmative noise into the phone, and it made Josuke smile (even though the strain on his cheeks sent a feeble shot of pain through his damaged face). “Okay, awesome. Bye.” _love you_, he almost tacked onto the end in some odd quick impulse that rattled around his skull like a loose marble, but Okuyasu returned the goodbye and hung up before it could slip out of his mouth. Frowning, Josuke pushed the thought out as he leaned his bike against the wall and darted quick as he could in the door—this was hardly the time to be weird as he was, or think about weird things like that.

First task of the day down, Josuke pedaled off once more in the direction of the station, the front wheel of his bike wavering dangerously as he sacrificed one arm to clutch the envelope of photographs close to his chest. He didn’t want to risk bending them by putting them in his backpack; they were _way_ too precious cargo for that. His unsteady ride wasn’t helped any by his building nerves, either—close as he knew he was to the end of all of this, he felt almost _too_ close, and it sent his heart racing off in just about every direction. The closer he got to the end, the less certain he felt of exactly _how_ it would end, too—maybe it wouldn’t even end right now, either. Maybe Keicho wouldn’t be there, or there would be some weird bureaucratic stuff he’d have to go through...or maybe, somehow, he’d run into Kira again, his brain offered up nonsensically for no other purpose than to send a cold shock of fear through him and make him wobble perilously on his bike. He grit his teeth, regained his balance in confrontation to his own thoughts—God knew he didn’t need to freak himself out any more.

The woman sitting behind the main desk in the lobby frowned with concern as Josuke walked in, tensing a little in her seat as though she were thinking about getting out of it—the way he looked, he was sure she probably thought he was here to report an incident. Objectively he knew that _should_ have been what he was doing, too, but Reimi’s panicked cry echoed in his skull—_No! No police!_—and he knew that even if he wanted to he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to do it. He spoke quietly, mumbling over both his swollen lip and his jumping nerves:

“Hi, um, is Nijimura Keicho in? He’s one of the interns...I have something I gotta give him…”

The woman relaxed slightly, taking a second to readjust her expression before smiling tensely and leaning down towards her computer. “Right, I’ll check his schedule for you real quick…” Josuke heard the tap of keys from her desk, soon followed by a tight lipped, negating sound. “Hm, yeah, looks like he doesn’t come in on Fridays. His supervisor’s here, though, so you can probably give whatever it is to him and he’ll pass it off. He’s in the third office to your left if you go down that hallway.” Without looking up again, she raised her arm over her head and pointed to her left, Josuke instinctively tracking the motion with a turn of his head. 

He gave her a quick thanks before making his way down the hall with his head down, consciously trying to even his breathing. This was fine. Better, maybe, even, than giving the pictures to Keicho directly—it would cut out the middle man, after all, and this supervisor almost certainly knew at least _something_ about what was going on. A hesitant calm was beginning to ripple through Josuke, giving a long exhale through his nose as he looked into each office door he passed by.

He read the nameplate on the supervisor’s desk first, due to the fact that his head was down—that was a slight relief, that he saw the name first, and didn’t just raise his head up to make eye contact with the man without being prepared. Still, Josuke only saw the silver engraved KAWAJIRI KOSAKU for a split second before he lifted his head up and parted his lips thinking he would speak, and it didn’t prepare him enough to actually _see_ the man. Sure enough it was him—the same guy who just last night had punched him in the stomach, had choked him until he passed out, had _laughed_ at things like that, and who was now at his job sitting at his desk like it was _nothing_. Josuke couldn’t cope—he just stood there, mouth open, thinking he would speak. Kosaku was looking up, too, coincidentally from whatever paperwork he was doing, and he looked at Josuke with a furrowed expression of a vague confusion...that slowly but surely shifted into horrifying recognition.

Their interaction was only a few moments, maybe not even seconds, and they didn’t share any words—Josuke got his brain back and turned quickly away, walking towards a nearby water fountain and deliberately leaning over to drink from it like that had been his intention the whole time. He tried hard, _very_ hard, to appear outwardly calm, appear outwardly to be not-himself: just another face in the station, which could have been believable with how busted that face was. Nothing could have been further from the truth, though. He drank from the water fountain if only to have _something_ to do, to have an excuse to grip the sides of it so tightly his knuckles went white to avoid falling over on his frighteningly shaky legs.

This was going to be fun news to break to Keicho. It wasn’t the end of the world, even if it _really_ felt like it—he was going over to the house that night anyway, after all, so maybe he would just go over early and hope Keicho was there—but a new fear of consequences unknown had taken root more strongly within him, and would not easily be uprooted. He spent another half an hour in the station, wandering around like a boy possessed for some kind of back entrance he could get out of without having to pass by Kosaku’s office. Not finding one, he opted instead to curl pathetically around a corner by his water fountain, watching for the man to finally leave his office so he could slip back out into the lobby and onto the street like a shivering, terrified thief.

—

“Jesus, man.”

“I know, I kn—”

“Looks like someone gave you a bad facelift.” Keicho gave an exasperated grin, and it came off meaner than Josuke suspected he meant it to. He got ready to give his now-practiced ‘i-don’t-wanna-talk-about-it’ spiel, but Keicho kept talking, moving on from the subject with a speed that was equal parts relieving and off-putting. “Oku’s gonna freak the fuck out when he sees you, I’m just gonna let you know now. But you’re way early, dude. He’s taking a nap right now I think—he told me you were coming over at eight…”

“Yeah, yeah, uh—sorry if I’m bothering you or anything. But I really gotta talk to you about something. It’s gotta do with, you know, all the stuff with the hand.”

Keicho paused for a moment, furrowing his brow, and when he spoke again he spoke in a noticeably lower tone, nodding slowly. “Uh, yeah, yeah, sure. Here, we can talk in the kitchen...what’s goin’ on?”

Walking further into the house with Keicho, Josuke held up the envelope of photos in his direction before taking a seat at the table, sighing quietly. “Okay. Uh, I got some pictures I gotta show you and talk to you about...I went to the station to try and give ‘em to you earlier today but you weren’t in. So, yeah.” Opening up the envelope, Josuke fished out the very first picture he’d taken that night—an awkward side profile of Kira as Josuke had tracked him to his car on foot—trying to recall the explanation he’d tried to prepare. Keicho raised an eyebrow, but didn’t speak, eyeing Josuke as if telling him to get on with it. Josuke gulped as he did just that, trying not to stumble over his words.

“So the guy in this picture is named Kira. Uh, I don’t know what his first name is...but I have his address. He lives in this house out by the villas—” With this, Josuke quickly got out the second picture of the house with Kira mid-step out of his car. “I wrote the address on the back of this one. Anyway, this guy, he’s really—I don’t even know really how to say it. Really messed up. And dangerous. And I think he’s involved with everything. He and this other guy...uh…” He hesitated before taking out the third and fourth photos—Kosaku leading the girl up to the door of the house, and meeting Kira there. 

“Oh, shit,” Keicho exhaled more than said as he squinted down at the photo, taking a moment to recognize the dark-haired grainy shape in Josuke’s photo—but still recognizing, unwillingly, horrifyingly. He looked up at Josuke then, and they recognized together, needing no words to share the information between themselves. “Really?”

Josuke didn’t answer with words—just laid out the rest of the photographs and looked down at the table like he was getting in trouble. Keicho similarly leaned down, looked over each one carefully and comprehensively, and Josuke watched his face change; he watched the shift from the cool best-friend’s-older-brother figure who was amusing Josuke’s weird obsession to someone just as frightened and scared as he was himself. Maybe even more so; after all, it had become part of Josuke’s life, horrible a fact as that was, but for Keicho it was new and all at once. 

“I think this girl Sugimoto Reimi’s in trouble with these guys,” Josuke eventually continued in a shaky voice, unable to stand letting the silence permeate any longer. Again recognition flickered in Keicho’s eyes, tense and vaguely distraught as they were, and again that mutual knowledge passed unspoken between them. “Uh, she’s not the girl in the pictures, she’s a different girl. But, I think—that is, I have reason to believe that, uh, Kira kidnapped her mom and dad, and her dog too...I don’t have any solid proof about this other than some things I’ve seen. I got...involved…” Josuke trailed off, nearly inaudible as, all at once, the ridiculousness of it all hit him. Because it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Saying it out loud like this, to someone else, just sitting in his best friend’s kitchen talking to Keicho like it was any other topic, Josuke knew he sounded more ridiculous than he ever had in his life. He was entirely ready for Keicho to start laughing now, become himself again, tell Josuke he was full of shit (maybe only for a few moments before kicking his ass for pulling such an elaborate prank on him, and nearly getting him with it). But that moment didn’t come. Keicho just kept looking down at the photos, bringing his hands exasperatedly to either side of his head, snaking them through his hair and ruining it. It was all _real_.

“Who knows you’ve got these?” Keicho muttered eventually, eyes darting back up at Josuke all business—it must have been the easiest thing to focus on, he knew, the logistics of everything; he’d been there himself, and he could sympathize.

“Just me and the photo lab,” Josuke assured, shaking his head to accentuate it, and Keicho sighed with that minimal relief.

“Great. Cool, um—” he faltered, voice slipping slightly higher before he coughed it out. “Uh, get ready to come in for further questioning at some point. I’m gonna take this and give ‘em to m—uh, give ‘em to, someone, I guess. Shit.” His head slipped further into his hands, grimacing. “Okuyasu’s not involved with any of this, right?”

“No.” The lie came easy to Josuke, well practiced in his head.

“He better not be. Because if he gets his stupid ass killed with all of this I’m coming and beating the shit out of you before this Kira guy gets a chance to.” Even though his tone was slightly joking, it was set off by the incredibly unfunny shine to Keicho’s eyes.

“Hey,” Josuke started in a loosely confrontational tone, though there was no substance behind it—just the typical distaste he could feel like battery acid on his tongue whenever someone made a quip about Okuyasu like that. It felt stronger now, somehow, considering everything. Keicho caught it and laughed a little, more of a harsh breath with that same shine still in his eyes.

“Hey what? The guy’s a fuckin’ idiot. You _know_ that.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

He had an idea of what he wanted to say, in a fantasy world with no consequences: that Okuyasu had helped him more than Keicho could ever know (and probably more than Okuyasu himself knew), that he never would have gotten this far without his unwavering dedication and support, that Okuyasu _was_ smart about different kinds of things—smart about his heart and feelings, and about doing what was right. These were all things he’d believed before, that he’d gotten worked up about in the past (though he knew it would probably embarrass Okuyasu to know Josuke had gotten into at least one fistfight with one of their classmates over one too many a sneering comment about him), but something was different about it now, weird the way he’d been weird all summer. It felt more dire, close to him now and burning sweeter and more intensely right under the surface of his skin. It freaked him out a little, that amping-up; for a moment there was an odd fear within him that Keicho would pick up the difference and say something about it, draw attention and force Josuke to explain himself—

_(or maybe make some comment like he used to when Josuke and Okuyasu’s friendship had just started—call Josuke a weird little queer (jokingly or not), or ask him with no shortage of wiggling eyebrows just _what_ he and Okuyasu were up to in his room for hours at a time—Okuyasu had always called him on it, protesting and getting into the sorts of funny little fights only brothers can have, but even then something about it had rubbed Josuke the wrong way—)_

That moment of bringing things to the surface never came, though; the creak of footsteps echoing on the Nijimura house’s old floorboards meant Okuyasu was awake and heading downstairs. It was a good enough excuse for Josuke to get up and walk out of the kitchen back towards the foot of the stairs to go see him, to avoid the conversation he’d started with Keicho (or, perhaps more likely, the conversation he was afraid he’d started with Keicho). It was easier to walk away and look like a bit of a weirdo than it was to talk and fumble over the full extent of how _weird_ he really felt. Keicho took it well, though; behind Josuke he coolly leaned against the entryway to the kitchen and watched Okuyasu come down with his arms folded (of course, not before scrambling a little to get the photos back in the envelope and the envelope on a counter where it would be less conspicuous).

Okuyasu didn’t exactly freak out like Keicho had warned for, but his face went pale about halfway down the staircase before half-running down to Josuke with a quickly deepening frown. “Dude, what the fuck—” he started once they were face to face, tense and fidgety as his eyes darted all over Josuke. It seemed like he was overwhelmed, not even knowing where to look, what to comment on first. “Your _hair_—”

Josuke’s hair was pulled back in a loose, sad ponytail—it had hurt far too much to lift his arms up long enough to try and do his hairstyle, as much as he tried. God, he’d really, _really_ tried, just to make things feel more normal. “Things got kinda outta hand like I said. I don’t really wanna talk about it—but I’m okay, yeah?” Josuke gave Okuyasu a shaky smile that didn’t work quite as well as he hoped it would to calm his nerves. In truth he _did_ want to talk about it with Okuyasu, unlike anyone else he’d worried so far, but he knew it would have been cruel to tell him something horrible as that when there was nothing to do to fix it. They walked together to the door and away from Keicho (who worried his lip with his teeth as he watched them leave), standing on the porch to talk in privacy, and Okuyasu gingerly put his hands low on Josuke’s arms—needing to touch but unsure how. Josuke wanted to tell him more than anything, and was even more scared to.

“Did it go over alright?” Okuyasu eventually said after his face journey of agreeing to Josuke’s wishes: grimacing at the sight of all the bruises, opening his mouth as if to say something, then settling into a vague and uncomfortable frown of acceptance that etched deeply into all his features. “Uh, talking to Keicho, I mean...didja have to tell him about me?”

Josuke shook his head, reaching forward to similarly grab onto Okuyasu’s arms and putting them in what was almost like a hug with half a foot of space between. In the same way, he wanted to reach out and touch Okuyasu, reassure him beyond the impact of his words. “You’re all clear, dude. Honestly I think it went over fine givin’ him the pictures and stuff...he’s gonna try and get it higher up and the station and like, pass it on to the people who can do something about it. I think things are going to be okay, really, even with everything that’s happened.” 

Josuke’s gut instinct to soothe, to care for others, was strong in that moment and overpowered any other course of action he might have thought up...even if he didn’t fully believe in it himself. Right, as he said it out loud, his uncertainty about everything only seemed to settle deeper and take root more solidly within him. Sure, he’d transferred the photos—but he’d been _seen_. Kosaku had seen him, undeniably. He was probably off work and home by now, probably calling up Kira to tell him exactly what he’d seen…

But then Okuyasu tugged on his sleeve a little, and they ended the moment and walked to where Keicho’s car was parked (though neither seemed fully satisfied—Okuyasu with his vague concern still lingering, and Josuke with his swirling knotted-up feelings even more concealed). After all, they had to leave to be on time for the party—they were going to a party, yes, where their friends would be, and it would be fun, and _normal_. That’s what Josuke repeated to himself as Okuyasu started the engine and drove off, over and over in his head to try and calm himself down—_alright, Josuke, it’s a party, have fun, be normal_.

—

The basement of Yukako’s house, a little unlike her as a person, was warm and cozy—all dark hardwood and big, plush furniture that looked like it would suck you right in if you dare to sit down. The rest of the house wasn’t like this, more standard for a Morioh house, but then you just sort of descended down into this pit and into a space made for teenagers, a sort of bubble removed from family life or expectations or cold-tiled kitchen islands. Josuke had only been down there a few times, but he liked it as a space a whole lot, which made him feel a little bad that he wasn’t in the sort of frame of mind to really enjoy it.

There were a _lot_ of people already, too—he and Okuyasu weren’t early by any means, but neither had expected just how many people would already be milling around and talking, leaning against the wall with drinks in hand or dancing close together to the music that was softly playing from Koichi’s boombox propped perilously on top of the TV. Josuke wouldn’t have ever thought this many people from Budagaoka would have not only still been in Morioh to come, but been in enough contact with Yukako to even know to come—she certainly hadn’t been the most popular girl in school or anything, after all. Seeing everyone there, together again, it soothed Josuke considerably...people had changed, sure, and sure there were people there he would have rather _not_ seen again, but that familiar environment of bodies and faces made it seem like he was back in high school once again—a feeling that wasn’t entirely _good_ or_ bad_, but just normal. It was a return, despite everything, despite everything that had happened...everything that was pushing at the interior of his skull and trying to break its way through his teeth and spill out of his mouth. 

It was easy enough to ignore it with Okuyasu near him—they could just talk like normal in groups of three or four, riff off of each other, extend that total comfort they had between themselves into otherwise awkward catch-up conversations. Maybe half an hour in, though, Okuyasu had gone back upstairs for a reason that had been lost over the sound of talking and music—to get ice for something, or someone, maybe. Presumably he’d come back down after that, but it had been just enough time for Josuke to lose him in the crowd, only catching small occasional glimpses of what he was pretty sure was the top of his head before being jostled by someone squeezing past him or otherwise hemmed in by contact or conversation. It started to go downhill, then, when he was alone. _Everyone_ wanted to know about his hair—he supposed it was inevitable, and he got _really_ good at coming up with answers after the first time caught off guard by it, but each time he got the question was another time forced to recall the reason behind it (the black eye and bandage on his nose certainly didn’t help too, though the low light of the basement meant that these things went less immediately noticed). Worse than this, though, was when the reason coming back to mind would beget the tiny little unsolved _problem_ still brewing at the surface. He couldn’t seem to keep his thoughts straight without them eventually drifting back off course and falling into the ditch of _Kosaku saw me and he’s home now and he’s probably called Kira_. It kept repeating in his mind, overshadowing every conversation he had and leaving him dazed and spaced out. Whether it was someone’s full ride scholarship they’d been picked for—

_(Kosaku)_

Someone else’s summer internship securing job after graduation—

_(saw me and he’s home now)_

Hazamada’s totally real girlfriend who lived in the United States—

_(and he’s probably called Kira)_

Everything was crowded out, going in one ear and out the other around the massive space that fact took up in his mind.The more he heard people talk about their lives, their summers, the more it occurred to him the enormity of what had happened to him, stark and unavoidable in contrast to everyone else. He’d had a _bad_ summer. Something _bad_ had happened to him...his experience, his life, _he_ was not normal. No one knew, and at the same time everyone _had_ to know, had to be able to tell that he was strange and different from the rest of them. But still nobody knew. He could be dead by the end of the night, _murdered_, and _nobody_ fucking knew…!

_(God, not even Okuyasu knows!!!)_

His chest was growing tight, head going dizzy as all the blood seemed to drain from it and into his rapidly beating heart...all of a sudden the music was playing _way_ too loud and too fast, everyone was talking _way_ too much and too animatedly...his legs were starting to shake, threatening to upend him where he stood unnoticed among the shifting, waving crowd of the party. He was freaking out, _finally_ freaking out, fully and completely...this felt like the very end of the world. There was no coming back from this—he was fucked forever—there was a hand on his shoulder suddenly, familiar and grounding.

“Dude…?”

Okuyasu was standing behind him, frowning, concern permeating his whole face as if it would stay there forever. “You’re freaking out. And don’t try and tell me you’re not because I _know_, dude, I _see_ you—”

“Yeah,” Josuke choked out, feeling like he had to squeeze the single syllable out with more force than he thought he would even be able to manage. Already he was starting to tear up, running with a harsh sting down his flushed face—it was cruel, _cruel_ now to keep this from Okuyasu, now that it had boiled up unavoidably to the surface. The look on his face was eating Josuke up inside, gnawing away at him; he felt, for a moment, like the worst friend in the universe.

“Y-Yeah, I just—I just got a lot of shit I gotta tell you, man,” he managed to sputter in a high pitch through his tears, trying to regain control over his breathing as Okuyasu, without speaking, put an arm over his shoulder and walked him upstairs to the bathroom. Even through his panic, there was a clear, almost logical version of himself inside his head asking the million dollar question over and over again—_what are you even going to say? How are you even going to say it?_

Well, he supposed he’d figure it out when he got there—as his knees finally buckled and he half-sat, half-fell on his ass down to the cold tile floor of the Yamagishi household bathroom, the only option was to figure it out when he got there.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the shorter chapter!!! maybe it will be a nice break though from the fuckin. 6k monsters i've been posting recently lmao

For a long moment, Josuke could only cry—back against the bathtub and head buried in his knees, shaking like a wet leaf as he sobbed quietly to himself. Okuyasu sat next to him, watching, not saying anything; he was close enough that they could touch, but he sat on his hands as he similarly pulled his knees up to mirror Josuke. 

Once that moment was over Josuke lifted his head back up—even though the action felt like it somehow took exponentially more energy to do—and flopped back against the side of the tub, staring upwards at so much ugly bathroom ceiling. He sighed before speaking, a heavy, profound sound as if it was meant to settle everything and clear the playing field in preparation for what Josuke was about to say. What the fuck was he even about to say? There was so much, it made him dizzy even thinking about the enormity of it (though that might have been the blood starting to rush to his head from the position he was in). At the core he knew he owed an explanation for tonight, why his face was busted, why he’d freaked out the way he did, exactly how things had gotten out of hand. He had to make up for scaring Okuyasu like that. Yet, even as he understood this, there was some itch to go deeper, further back, something stranger and more nebulous he hadn’t admitted to Okuyasu yet...and perhaps hadn’t even really admitted to himself, either.

“Me and Reimi did it.”

“Wh—” Okuyasu started, confusion screwing up his features, before he seemed to get it and shift instead to a cute sort of awe. “Shit, really?”

“Yeah. Like, twice.”

“Fuckin’ _cool_, man,” Okuyasu grinned, but Josuke didn’t return the sentiment, groaning slightly where he sat still staring up at the ceiling. It was easier that way. “She _was_ super cute—”

“No, dude, _not_ cool. It’s like—it was really—” He held his hands up like he was about to gesture something that would make his point clearer, but nothing came to mind, so they just hung limply out in front of him. “It was really fucked up. I dunno. I didn’t like it. I think she’s got like—like that thing where something bad happens and then you’re scared forever. Something _bad_ happened to her, man...I don’t even think I can even really understand it, even with what I ended up seeing that first night. I just wanna help her so bad, and I thought maybe that would help...but I kinda think I just made things worse.”

He propped himself upright and looked over at Okuyasu once he finished his first confession, getting a temperature check on how weirded out the other boy was by everything—which didn’t seem all that much, after all, less so than Josuke had assumed in what was more than likely high-level projection. Above all the look on Okuyasu’s face was that of concern—the kind of expression Josuke knew he so often was on the other end of, that made his ribcage feel like jello to now receive. That insecurity worked its way out of his mouth in an apology he knew was unnecessary even as he was saying it. “I’m sorry I know that’s really weird—”

“No, dude,” Okuyasu cut in, voice steady in a strange but grounding contrast to Josuke’s own anxious wheeling. “It’s not...I mean, it’s okay. Uh. When did you—” his voice snuck up on him and strained high, so he coughed it out into his elbow before he kept talking again. “When did you even see her?”

“Well. I went over to the apartment again the night after we were there together,” Josuke started, feeling all of a sudden antsy and oddly dry. The panic was fading considerably, now, ushering in with its departure instead a white hot embarrassment that quickly superseded everything. It was still painful, sure, but manageable, localized within himself. He was embarrassed with _himself_, after all, the scope of that contained within this room, within his body. Unlike his fear, there was a sort of relief in letting it spill out of him, a pressure that was eking out little by little—he kept spilling it, words tumbling out over each other as each eagerly raced to leave his mouth first. “Just to see that she was okay. That was the first time. I wasn’t going to again, but then, uh, last night, too. I guess I thought...I’d just done something wrong the first time, and I could still help her. But it was worse than the first time. That’s when things started getting—”

“Outta hand.” Okuyasu finished his sentence for him, the same phrase Josuke had used to placate him earlier that afternoon coming out of him like it had been practiced (or maybe just bounced around in his brain the whole day, returned to). He had started to take on Josuke’s panic in his place, voice small and starting to waver with it—Josuke, for a moment, was the worst friend in the universe. There was no question, now, In Josuke’s mind, of whether or not he was going to tell...simply how to do it in a way that wouldn’t be more upsetting than objectively he knew the story was. It was harder to force out of himself, too, as though the words were catching on his lips and teeth in protest, but he choked his way through it because he knew he fucking _had_ to. Speaking with a deliberately measured attempt at calm, he laid out plain and simple the facts of what had happened to him that night before, being sure to leave no stone unturned or topic unmentioned, a verbal transcript of all those hours—at least, the ones he was conscious for. His words wavered as he watched the fear arrive and propagate on Okuyasu’s features, heart breaking, but he swallowed that down and got through all of it...it was, after all, the very least he could do, the very least he owed. 

There was quiet afterwards, for a long while as Josuke finally finished the agonizing and uninterrupted run of his story. It made sense; what was there even to say, following something like that? Josuke just slumped further forward, stewing in it, _wallowing_. It felt good in a sick and twisted sort of way, getting that off his chest, but that self-serving relief was laughably overpowered by the knot in his stomach that only tugged tighter and tighter. That silence reveled in its natural course, stretching out into something tense and uncomfortable, nearly unbearable. In the end, it was punctuated not suddenly, but with the slowly creeping sound of Okuyasu beginning to cry. It was an unmistakable sound, after all, one Josuke knew and knew well, though rendered sharp and pulsing with the knowledge that he had brought it forth, that _he_ had made Okuyasu cry. Josuke looked up, and their eyes met—Okuyasu had always been an ugly crier, face already blotching with red as his bottom lip quivered incessantly. Josuke _knew_ this, they were friends, they had been friends so long, longer than anyone else despite having only met two years ago. That sense—_I know you_—threatened to bowl him over. They looked at each other, and Okuyasu started talking, not needing any prompting or push from Josuke to start—he knew, too.

“I shoulda never told you all that shit, man,” he struggled out, tears pouring into his voice and rendering it achy and awkward. “About—about Reimi and the apartment—I got you into all of this. It’s my fault. You got hurt ‘cuz of me, and I can’t do anything about it...just sucks, dude.” He sniffled and broke up his speech, trying to calm himself down and seeming to not quite succeed. Josuke didn’t answer yet, but scooted closer and put an arm around Okuyasu’s shoulder—the best he could do. “I just care about you so much,” Okuyasu eventually continued, rubbing his eyes and turning his head to look at Josuke with a pitiful attempt at a smile. Their faces were so close, and Josuke was so weird, weird as he’d been all summer. “And—and I dunno what I’d do if you ever got hurt real bad, or even killed. Because what if you _do_ get k-killed?” Again he broke off into another sobbing jag, tears running blunt and obtrusive down his flushed cheeks. “That could happen. It’s _real_. And I’m just so fuckin’ scared something like that’s gonna happen to you, and I can’t do anything about it even though it’s my fault and it _sucks_.”

“It’s not your fault,” Josuke started on instinct, but even though it was true he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Still, he said it again, despite how flat it fell from his mouth, and he curled his arm just slightly tighter around Okuyasu’s shoulder. “Dude, it’s not your fault. I’m gonna be okay. I’m gonna be okay.” The words were more to soothe Okuyasu with their repetition rather than impart a meaning. After all, Josuke knew there was nothing to say that would instantly fix this; it was something too big for the both of them, something they couldn’t handle at their age even in having each other. Probably it was the sort of thing no person was ever fit to handle. All Josuke could do was try and fill in the gaps as best he could, band-aid over a bullet wound, all that other pessimistic shit that was clouding his head and stifling his attempts even further.

“How?” Okuyasu sniffled, eyes wide and painfully red-looking at the corners, and he asked it like Josuke would genuinely have an answer. It was a damn good question, after all. “How can you know that?” He was starting to cry just as badly as before, all over again, even though it must have stung so bad, and Josuke had no answer for him as he slumped his head forward again towards the knees of his jeans. They were so fucked up now, tear-stained and foundation smeared, and that was what he could focus on with everything. Between the two of them Josuke could visualize a string pulling, more and more taut, until eventually it would snap and they would go on for the rest of time with the gap it left. That thought was unbearable—Josuke cared about him too much, even in his weird way, even if he couldn’t find the words this second to express it and even if it wouldn’t do anything. They could not be separated, even if like this and not physically. Somewhere, there had to be some assertion that things _would_ be fine, that everything _would_ be okay in the end, because there would be no just or fair universe that would let _this_ go sour, too, on top of everything. Josuke just had to look, to search for that sign wherever it was...he looked up again, and met Okuyasu’s eyes, and all of a sudden remembered he’d already seen it. Every other emotion seemed to flush out of him, replaced by a single uniform, smothering calm as he opened his mouth to speak.

“I know, dude,” he said, sure he was too quiet to be heard—mostly he was saying it to himself. He was shaking with the weight of it, with the realization he’d come to, and his voice wavered with what could have easily been mistaken for fear. “I _know_. I _know_, I _know_ it. Because—b-because—” His voice was strangled in his throat as he tried to find any possible way to express in words the enormity of the realization that still hadn’t fully sunk in. “I saw a robin, man. This morning, after everything—I saw a r-rob—” His own tears snuck up on him, overpowering and cutting off his voice, and he just sobbed even harder than Okuyasu himself, unable to finish what he was trying to say. “Oh, god—!”

For a moment, horrifyingly, it seemed as though Okuyasu didn’t quite understand what Josuke meant, mouth hanging open in the anticipation of asking—until it hit for him, too, and all that was left then was to understand, together, and hold each other. There was no discussion of it needed; mutually, they gravitated towards each other into what went beyond any hug they’d shared in the past, something more intimate and desperate, vital. They cried, still, but it was out of something else—an overwhelming sense that was no longer fear or worry but wasn’t really anything else they could think of. Something sacred and important passed between the two of them, an understanding processed through their tears, and as they cried they were closer than ever before because of it—weird, together. _Maybe it’s_ _hope,_ a small thought seemed to come to Josuke of its own volition, piping up from some unrealized back corner of his brain as he was consumed in all other aspects by the feeling of Okuyasu so close to him. _This thing, this weird thing—it could be hope, maybe_.

—

When they finished their mutual cry, they looked into each other’s eyes and just breathed in and out in tandem, not speaking for a long time. Something had changed between them, for the better, and slowly Josuke was coming to a hypothesis (or perhaps a wish) on exactly what it was. He savored it in silence, still, after everything, afraid to be too weird. It was Okuyasu who broke that silence first, face still flushed if now from something _else _other than crying. “Do you wanna go back down and dance?” He asked, soft and tender-like, hesitant as though there were a universe where Josuke would have ever said no. He just nodded, still not ready to speak—that sounded like the best thing possible right now. He had no clue exactly how long they’d been sitting here, somewhat cramped up against the bathtub and curled in on each other; it felt simultaneously like it had been hours and no time at all. His joints hurt as they stood together, walked out of the bathroom and back down the stairs to the basement...holding hands the whole time, though Josuke didn’t realize until much later. Now, somehow, it felt _right_, natural on some profound level.

But when they got back down, the music playing wasn’t exactly the right kind for dancing—well, at least, other than one kind of dancing. The vocals were slow and deliberate, matching the long-held synth notes and gentle ambient sound that accompanied them. A lot of people had gone home already, and those that remained were draped peacefully over furniture or having quiet, private conversations at the very edges of the room. The center was reserved for the few dancers—what two or three couples were swaying with hands on shoulders or hips, eyes either closed in reverence or locked only on each other. Even Koichi and Yukako were in on it, and for once the sight of Koichi stretching to manage keeping his hands on her shoulders didn’t bring a (good intentioned) laugh to his face. “Oh,” Okuyasu sighed more than said, looking around at the oddly serene sight of what the party had become. Josuke anticipated some comment about how they couldn’t dance, anticipated just joining the fringes and adding to that quiet murmur surrounding the dancers in their ritual, anticipated going home and having things be the same...though he knew, of course, that wouldn’t be true. Instead, Okuyasu turned to face him where they stood still on the last step down, swallowed before asking. “Do you...still wanna dance?”

“Yeah.” The answer came easier than Josuke would have ever expected, simple as taking a breath in and feeling exactly the same way.

Between them, they had only Josuke’s experience of awkwardly co-swaying while holding hands with a girl at a birthday party too many years ago to properly remember—they moved at a pace both awkward and eager, stumbling slightly into each other’s arms and laughing softly at a joke only for the two of them. Josuke meant to hold one of Okuyasu’s arms out to the side like a gentleman, the way he saw in movies, but that went out of the window in favor of the drive to be close, to have their hands on each other. Okuyasu’s hands over his shoulders, his hands on Okuyasu’s hips—that slight pressure was so comforting and mutual, and Josuke felt his heart fluttering in a way that could only mean one thing. There was no need to ask if this was okay, if it had crossed a line, if it was weird. They shared only a look, which communicated everything—that this was _right_.

They danced in silence for a while, looking into each other’s eyes, swaying gently in tune to the song—which seemed to go on for so long, giving them all this time in the world together. Every so often one or both of them would grow nervous, look to one side or the other—but everyone was wrapped up in their own moment, their own version of this thing they were sharing. They were alone, together, in public, and the idea was thrilling and empowering.

“Dude,” Josuke started to say the thing he’d been practicing in his head for all this time, perhaps for even longer without fully understanding it. His voice was still somewhat hoarse from his crying. “Okuyasu. I love you.”

Okuyasu blinked, then settled into a wide, happy smile, as though he’d known all this time and had simply been waiting for Josuke to say it. “I love you too, man.”

“I mean—” Josuke couldn’t risk being misinterpreted; he knew there it wasn’t likely there would be another moment like this, where he would be able to say it, where he wouldn’t psyche himself out. He swallowed hard before speaking again. “I _love_ you.” It was all at once a realization, a confession, a coming-out, everything wrapped up into one big scary cocktail of moments that can go horribly, horribly wrong. Yet, at the same time, Josuke was so glad to say it, and wanted to say it over and over again: _Okuyasu, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you—_

“I know. That’s what I mean, too.”

It would have been futile to pick and choose which one of them initiated the kiss—it was hardly even _initiated_ at all, more as if they were being drawn towards each other through some process of gravity or magnets, something natural and of-the-earth. Closer, and closer—until their lips met for just a second, testing the waters before they pulled away like they were astonished by themselves. It lasted only for a moment before they couldn’t resist that gravity-magnet-pull again. Okuyasu, who had never been kissed—who Josuke knew had never been kissed—and himself who might as well have never been kissed, with how different and more monumental this felt—it was as though they were the anchorpoint of a universe, their own private universe. Heat and stars and butterflies were pulsing through Josuke’s body, over and over in the best kind of feedback loop—

_I love you! I love you! I love you!_

For a moment, it didn’t matter that they were at a party surrounded by their old classmates, didn’t matter what would happen afterwards between them...it didn’t even matter that Josuke might be dead or worse at any given moment after this. All there was was _this_, after all. Josuke and Okuyasu at last, kissing, kissing until they physically needed to stop and breathe and then kissing some more, solving that mystery together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know a single 18 year old who would be bumping julee cruise at a house party but the song from this scene in blue velvet makes me Yearn so <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgXlMNDezk4>


	12. Chapter 12

The interior clock in Keicho’s car said it was 1:37 AM, but it didn’t feel nearly that late at all—Josuke and Okuyasu were too mutually giddy for anything like exhaustion to be able to take root. Soon as Okuyasu slid into the driver’s seat and Josuke slid into the passenger’s beside him, they reached over the car’s center console, too anxious to keep feeling and indulging in this new and thrilling thing they had between themselves. They sat like that for a good while with no radio on, needed no excuse or explanation for it, before Okuyasu had to regretfully take his hand out of Josuke’s and put it on the steering wheel to start driving. Josuke, unsure of what to do with his hands, reached out to fiddle with the knob on the radio before opting to just fold them in his lap upon finding nothing he deemed suitable. He wasn’t really in the mood to listen to music, anyway, wanting to sit in a silent moment with Okuyasu—a silence that was no longer agonizing and uncomfortable, but sent little pleasant shocks of feeling and memory through and between the two of them.

Okuyasu broke that silence as they rounded a vacant corner, low beams sweeping a lazy arc across the wall of some sleeping Morioh family’s house. “So I can probably just drop you off out front of your house, yeah?”

Josuke frowned at this, features of his face scrunching up with confusion. “I thought you were gonna sleep over.”

“Yeah, well...I didn’t know if you still wanted to.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to?”

“I didn’t know if it would be weird.” He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke (something that was, to be totally honest, more than a little rare of him to do), and spoke quieter than before like he was embarrassed by something. Something was on his mind, clearly, and Josuke picked at it, even as he began himself to realize and feel the same way—cognizant now of how boundaries would have to be reevaluated and reestablished with what they now had.

“What do you mean, weird?”

“Just, _weird_. I dunno. Because I like you,” Okuyasu started with the slightest shiver in his shoulders, and Josuke felt something go off in his chest at how plainly and openly he could say something like that. “And you like me maybe, and ‘cuz we—uh—”

“Kissed?”

“Yeah. Yeah, kissed.” Okuyasu blushed with the words, and Josuke knew there was no way he knew how cute he was. The same heat flushed Josuke’s cheeks as he listened further. “Because, when people do stuff like that and feel that way, you know, it’s—shit. I don’t know what I’m even trying to say really. This is super stupid—” Okuyasu’s lip quivered as his face screwed up with the effort of trying to express something they were both thinking feeling but neither could manage to plainly say.

“It’s not stupid. Don’t worry about stuff like that, man. It wouldn’t be weird if we didn’t think it was weird, even if we like each other. It wouldn’t _have_ to be weird.” _But it could be_, Josuke’s brain piped up, picking up what Okuyasu was putting down more than he could consciously, and he fidgeted with the idea a little, thinking about it even if he didn’t fully understand. Okuyasu felt it too, gripping the steering wheel just a little tighter, but neither he nor Josuke recognized this for what it was. Again there was silence between them, growing tense, but some sort of _new_ tension, taut but not anxious, thick and unbreakable even as it seemed to ask to be broken. 

“Would you...want it to be wei—”

“Hold on.” Josuke caught sight of it first only out of the corner of his eye, but caught sight of it regardless, a cold shock flushing his system of any sensation other than slimy fear. “Hold on, hold on, holy shit.”

“Huh?”

“That car.” Josuke pointed shakily at it through the windshield as they rolled up to a stop sign, voice already beginning to waver. Sure enough, there was one other occupied car on the other side of the road a while up ahead of them, idling lazily for a long moment before driving off at a similarly slow and measured pace. It was too dark to see who was inside of it, other than the two shadowy shapes up front, but Josuke knew the only person who would ever drive that slowly, that carefully. “That’s Kira’s car, man, I swear to god.”

“Shit, really?”

“Yeah. I don’t think anyone else in Morioh has a car that old. Or drives like that, too.” There was no need for Okuyasu to ask how Josuke would have known something like that—it was an assumed, unspoken truth that Josuke would just _know_, with everything that happened. Okuyasu’s face paled as he stayed at the stop sign longer than he was meant to, watching until the car passed onto another street and couldn’t be seen any longer. He picked up driving again at a creeping, tense pace.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” Okuyasu murmured hopefully, even though he didn’t sound too sure of it himself. “There’s gotta be more people in Morioh than him interested in old cars, you know, so that can’t mean anything for certain...could be someone else, like, coming home from a party or something.”

“Maybe,” Josuke breathed out more than replied, trying to settle back into his seat and relax. He _wanted_ to believe that Okuyasu was right, that it was just some coincidence meant to put the fear of God in him a little, and tonight for the first time it seemed like that could even be true. But as they kept driving, that coincidence seemed to keep repeating itself over and over—glimpses of that same car, driving at the same pace, always a stretch ahead or behind them, always _there_. Even when Okuyasu, at Josuke’s increasingly anxious request, went off the usual route to their neighborhood and looped back and forth near where Koichi’s house was, it still remained close, same calm pace like the driver could keep this up for days...they were being followed.

Josuke was starting to have trouble breathing at this point, chest rising and falling rapidly with that same painful anxiety as he kept looking back over his shoulder, and Okuyasu was trying to work through his own burgeoning panic in order to try and keep Josuke calm (while at the same time, unfortunately, still attempting to drive). “He’s gonna kill me, man,” Josuke kept repeating under his breath, face going bright, frightening red as Okuyasu took one hand off the wheel to put it around his shoulder. “And you too if you’re here with me—what if he comes up from behind and hits the car? Then even if he keeps us alive Keicho’ll kill us both—”

“Don’t freak out too much, dude, we can lose track of him if we just got a little faster—” Punctuating his point, Okuyasu pressed harder on the gas, giving the car a reassuring jolt of speed. It worked only for a moment, though, as sure enough Josuke kept catching sight of Kira’s car nearby as they turned just about any corner other than one that would lead them to Josuke’s house. Josuke honestly couldn’t tell if Kira was going any faster or if he was just finally snapping, losing his mind from all of this—all the while he still couldn’t fully catch his breath, lightheaded and dangerous.

“What are we gonna do now?” Josuke grimaced, now fully turned around in his seat to keep watch out the back window. Sure enough, there was the fucking car, a little ways behind them before turning down a side street...soon to reappear, of course. “He’s still on us…”

Okuyasu had to think about it, that same grimace crossing his face as Josuke’s fear started to infect him, and when he turned to speak it was with a grim and serious tone that scared the hell out of Josuke to hear from his mouth:

“Keicho’s got a gun at home.”

“Dude, what?”

“He bought a gun, yeah—I’m not ‘sposed to know but he was showing it off to some of his friends when he got it and I overheard—” He was rambling with his nerves, car picking up slightly more speed as he subconsciously put more weight on the gas pedal. “If we go to my house, then—”

“No way. Then he’s gonna know where you live—”

“This guy’s a killer! You said it yourself. He’s just gonna kill us unless somebody can—”

“Would Keicho be able to even do it?”

“Shoot him, you mean?” Okuyasu blinked, as though he, like Josuke, was realizing how simultaneously grave and ridiculous this conversation was. There was something so morbid about having to have it in the first place, after all, so frankly discussing the kind of thing you’d have to work out in a shitty crime movie or something. Only it was _real_. The car was only going faster and faster in an outlet for Okuyasu’s anxiety, swerving corners haphazardly with his eyes on Josuke as they spoke—there wasn’t even time to think about _that_ danger, that fear. “I think he could do it. We’re brothers even if he kinda hates me so I think if I were really in danger he’d do it.”

“I still don’t think it’s smart t—_HOLY SHIT OKUYASU STOP THE CAR!_”

He nearly hit her, screeching to a stop just feet away from where she stood in the middle of the road with a horrible wail of shredding rubber tire. That’s all Josuke could think logically as he watched the headlights of the car sweep over her, watched her not even bring her hands up to shield her eyes from the light—_we nearly hit her, we nearly killed her_. He thought about it for a long time afterwards, too.

Reimi was naked, stark naked as she stood wavering like an unstable tree planted smack in the middle of the street—her pale skin stood out fresh and wrong in the darkness of the night around her. Something _bad_ had happened, worse than before, Josuke knew: after all, that same skin was mottled with bruises and cuts, blood running from the corner of her mouth and down her inner thigh. Beyond that, though, were her eyes. Big and dull, as if entirely drained of livelihood or desire, like the sort of shambling living-corpse she already looked half a step away from. She had been violated, even more profoundly than Josuke had known before, left here, exposed—he felt like he should go to prison just for looking at her like this, and averted his eyes as he hastily opened the car door and got out into the street to go to her with no explanation to Okuyasu (who was still reeling from how close he’d just come to ending a life). Unnoticed, unseen, Kira drove off in another direction and left them alone, as though now satisfied.

“Reimi...Reimi!”

Josuke called out to her as he approached, though she made no indication whether she heard him or not—just kept standing there, wavering, a deer in perpetual headlights. She didn’t move or cry out when Josuke put an arm around her and started taking her to the car, unresponsive like a ragdoll in his grip. She was so much heavier than Josuke expected, than he _knew_, and for a moment he panicked irrationally that she really _had_ died and was somehow managing to stand regardless. He could think of no other explanation for the pure dead weight that seemed to make the few feet back to the car seem like an eternity.

“Holy shit,” Okuyasu couldn’t keep from exclaiming as Josuke awkwardly swung one back door open with a single hand and laid Reimi down across the seats “The fuck happened to her, man…?” His voice was high and tense with fear—it made sense. Even Josuke was fighting past his own _holy shit_ impulse, seeing her like this—Okuyasu had not seen anything, and so again tonight Josuke knew he had exposed him to something he knew he would probably never want to see or think about.

“I dunno,” Josuke answered hurriedly, quickly pulling his shirt over his head and putting it over her—anything to cover her up, let her keep something to herself. As he slipped her limp arms through each sleeve, he was close enough to hear her heart hammering away in her battered chest, and it was the one thing keeping him from shutting down and sobbing for her sake, that she was (if only physically) still _here._ “Just—we just gotta get her somewhere safe, man, let’s take her back to my house—” It was probably, if not definitely, a stupid idea to do something like that, but Josuke could hardly manage to problem solve behind the deep-ingrained panic response of _go home, find mom._

They drove in silence the rest of the way there, no radio, just Reimi starting to give little moans of pain from the backseat—the saddest sound in the world, but at least she was alive, she was alive, she was alive.

—

As the three of them walked up to the front door of Josuke’s house—or, perhaps more accurately, Josuke and Okuyasu walked with Reimi draped heavy like a sack of flour over Josuke’s shoulder—she started to seemingly gain recognition back, grabbing Josuke’s shoulders with no warning and scaring the living shit out of him. “Oh god. Josuke. Is that you?” She whispered urgently in his ear, voice high and ungrounded with shock. “Is that you? Oh god.”

“Yeah, it is,” he offered back, but she didn’t seem to hear or understand—just repeated herself over and over.

“Is that you? Is that you? Oh God. Josuke…”

He’d hoped that perhaps it would be Jotaro who was awake, and he would sit Reimi down on the couch he slept on and call an ambulance and the police in his usual stony demeanor before breaking the news to Josuke’s mom in the same way—just so she wouldn’t see it first hand, without immediate context or explanation. He wasn’t that lucky; she screamed and dropped the plate she was holding, but seemed to feel guilty about the second Reimi reacted to the sound like she’d been shot. 

“Who is that? Josuke, oh my god, what happened?”

Each word still racked Reimi’s body violently, and in lieu of any appropriate answer all Josuke could do was put a finger up to his lips apologetically. His mom got the memo, mouthing a quick _sorry_ before stepping back a little with wide eyes as Josuke maneuvered Reimi to the couch Jotaro had woken up from and vacated without a single word. Reimi clung to him tightly, unable to be shaken, and as they sat she all but fell over him, unable to hold up her own weight. He went to speak, but there were no words that managed to come out—all he could do was look at his mom, mouth hanging open, mirroring her own expression. Only then did he realize the magnitude of the _Talk_ they were going to have after this, is he lived to see it.

Thankfully Okuyasu’s brain was functioning more than Josuke’s, and with one look back in him and Reimi’s direction he started talking how Josuke knew he should have been able to in that moment. “Can you call an ambulance for her please?” Okuyasu asked, oddly high pitched and polite, adult in that moment. Josuke’s mom gave a blink of surprise, as though snapping out of a haze the same kind Reimi was in, and only nodded as she quickly walked over to where the phone sat mounted on the wall. “A-And can you ask them to send the police too?”

“No, don’t,” Josuke tried to pipe up, but his voice died in his throat and went unheard, and his mom was already on the phone speaking in that measured mom-hiding-panic tone they must teach you how to do somewhere. _No police_, he could still hear in his mind just as profoundly and horribly as when he’d heard Reimi say it, and now considering everything it seemed like even more dire a request. Thankfully Reimi didn’t hear—just clung to him like it was all she could stand to do, talking directly into his ear.

“Josuke,” she started again, louder than she must have intended as her voice wavered perilously. “Where were you? Where were you, where were you, where were you? You were supposed to help me—oh, God, Josuke, HOLD ME!” She tapered off into a desperate scream as she put what must have been her remaining energy into a lunge at Josuke (who honestly wasn’t sure how he was possibly supposed to hold her more than he already was). The sound turned both Jotaro and Okuyasu’s heads, and his mom looked at him over her shoulder from the other room as she spoke quiet and tense to the operator. No one said anything, just looked, watched them, which was the worst possible turnout. When Reimi spoke again, it was thankfully in a hot, vicious whisper only for Josuke. “You’re my boyfriend. My secret lover...why didn’t you come help me? You’re supposed to be my hero—”

“The ambulance should be coming any minute now,” Josuke’s mom cut in in a blunt, definitive tone, walking into the living room and leaning against the kitchen entryway to join the lookers more officially. When she made eye contact with Josuke, it was clear she had a million questions she would wait to ask until all of this was over, but trusted him enough to wait for them—a trust Josuke felt certain he didn’t deserve. “The cops are on their way, too—”

“_NO!_” 

Reimi’s harsh shriek ripped its way through the room and stopped Josuke’s mom dead in her tracks. “No, don’t get the police! Oh God!” She was spiraling yet again, more so than she already had, breath quick and shallow where her chest was pressed up suffocatingly close to Josuke’s. “JOSUKE, please I can’t STAND IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! I need you, please, love me, LOVE ME!” Tears were falling hot and steady down her cheeks, transferring uninvited to Josuke’s own. There wasn’t anything he could even say—he saw his mom looking at him, confusion and concern muddying her expression, and he couldn’t remember being this embarrassed before in his life. As if it wasn’t already bad, Reimi, too, lifted her head to look around the room, at Josuke’s mom specifically—and a strange sort of wavering grin broke out over her face.

“I opened myself to him—he put his disease in me. He loves me. He’s my boyfriend,” she asserted, as if daring someone to challenge her on that fact (even though everyone else in the room was too confused and horrified to even think about what a challenge to that would even look like). Her nails were on him, were _in_ him, digging with a small pinprick pain in the flesh of his bare arms and chest. “Tell me it’s okay. I opened myself to you. You’re the only person who knows. Okay? Okay, okay, okay?” She spoke only to him now, shaking his shoulders, but he looked out at the rest of the room—at Jotaro, who was unreadable, at his mom, who narrowed her eyes and frowned before looking over at Okuyasu...at Okuyasu, who had started to cry, and who buried his hands in his face before walking quickly out of the room. No one else in the room could have known why it upset Josuke, seeing him react like that, but his blood went cold and his bottom lip quivered regardless.

“Dude…?” Josuke called out after him, but it was no use—he was headed out down the hall, and soon out of sight. 

As though his exit broke some unnamed tension, Josuke’s mom sighed, stretching her shoulders back before retreating the same way. “Christ. I’m gonna get her some pants,” she muttered before shutting the door to her room a little harder than necessary. Inside, Shizuka woke up and started crying. Great. Jotaro found an excuse perhaps only in his head to leave as well, getting up and walking out of the living room without a word and leaving Josuke and Reimi, for the moment, alone. 

“He hurt them,” Reimi whispered, and it was so quiet that for a moment Josuke hardly heard or understood at first—was just thinking about how small stains of her blood had transferred and smeared over his body, how she would never get better now. “H-Her head—he—” Her voice caught in her throat, and she couldn’t speak any further for a long while—just shivered against him, where they were alone in that moment, something sickly domestic about how they lay together on the couch like lovers and held each other. “Help them. You have to help them, please, Josuke, help them, help me.”

But Josuke was not her boyfriend, and could never be her boyfriend, and simply stared forward out the window as the red and blue lights of the ambulance filled up his vision, as he could start to hear the siren blaring muffled on the other side of the glass. Despite this, he couldn’t stop himself from petting her hair like she was a little kid, not speaking but still reassuring.

It was an ordeal and a half for the paramedics to get Reimi into the ambulance—all the while she screamed and writhed with pain, only worse once they managed to get her outside and she saw the three cop cars that had accompanied it. Josuke, who could do very little now other than stand next to the action and watch, did exactly so, feeling, of all possible emotions, embarrassment for her. Above everything else, embarrassment for how she now had to be seen, exposed in that way to the real world. A wind had started to pick up, warm and nauseous with summer heat, and it brought relief at least in how it made everything ripple and wave just slightly—any stillness would have been unbearable.

The other people in the house slowly resurfaced Reimi was hauled away, the arrival of the ambulance breaking the spell that had banished them—Josuke’s mom bouncing Shizuka on her hip with a deep-set frown, Jotaro leaning far away against the wall to light a cigarette, and most importantly Okuyasu coming up to stand right next to Josuke like he didn’t know what else to possibly do. His face was red and hot from frustrated tears, and he kept looking back at Josuke and then looking away again like he was conflicted, or god forbid upset, about something. When Josuke thought about why that might be it made him shiver—in a way he knew already, really. But how to explain something like that? He thought about it, but it hurt his head too much in tandem with the slow recovery from the onslaught of stimulation he and Okuyasu had both received in what could have only been the last half an hour or so. He opted instead to talk like nothing had happened, a revisionist history where they brought Reimi inside and she cried quietly to herself and made no other noise.

“I should probably go with her—”

“Go ahead.”

“Okuyasu—?”

“Go ahead!” 

His blunt response was punctuated and put off kilter by another rush-up of angry tears, with Okuyasu brushed away exasperatedly before walking off, arms crossed, around the side of the house to disappear once more. There was nothing for Josuke to do but blink with the suddenness of the action, and know that it kind of made sense, considering. After what they’d shared at the party, and after what Reimi had ‘shared’, it must have looked a certain way, out of context—Josuke shivered with the uncomfortable worm of miscommunication wriggling at home in his gut. It would be fine, they’d talk about it and work it out real soon...well, as long as Josuke didn’t end tonight face down in a ditch on the side of the highway. Or, even worse, as a little pile of ash that would blow away in that warm wind and cease to exist entirely. He tried and failed considerably not to think about things like that as he climbed into the back of the ambulance, an experience he thought he’d never have in his whole life, something that seemed fake and for TV—thought about it as he saw just a glimpse of Okuyasu walking back to his own house at a tense and forceful gait, still rubbing at his eyes and seeming to mutter under his breath. Then the paramedics closed up the ambulance’s back doors, engine roaring to life and nearly throwing Josuke onto his ass as he scrambled to kneel by Reimi, meeting her wide and panicked eyes as he was shut in so claustrophobically.

“Hold me, Josuke, hold me,” Reimi whimpered, even though she must have known such a thing was impossible, what with how she’d been restrained on the stretcher to protect the paramedics who were now flitting about her with various instruments. To Josuke, though at the moment it wasn’t any of their faults, it felt bitterly as if they were feebly attempting to fill in the five fucking years she’d needed something like this to happen for. Even as she was prodded and examined, looked over, Reimi’s eyes were trained only on Josuke, wide and bulging, desperate. “Help them, please. Help them. Promise me you’ll help them!”

“I promise, I promise,” Josuke murmured thoughtlessly, hands tense and awkward at his side. He would have held her if he could, really, despite everything—he felt he owed her that, that creature comfort that had been kept from her. It was over, and he’d helped her, this was the end of the story—where she went to the hospital like real people do and got better. Still, though, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he hadn’t done much of anything at all, that she was still sad and scared forever, and would always be like that. Maybe it was just an impulsive thought, or some kind of bizarre projection he couldn’t possibly weed through on his own. Or maybe it was because, even now, she cried and moaned in pain, hearing nothing as she called out so desperately to him.

“_HOLD ME I’M FALLING!_ Oh, Josuke, please, help them, help them…”

—

Josuke wasn’t allowed in the room with her—they’d deemed his presence too agitating for her in the end—he was asked to sit outside and wait as they got her calmed down and in a stable situation before calling him in to ask some questions. He understood all this in the sort of abstract, gut sense you’re meant to understand the instructions of someone who has authority over you; regressing back to school days, he sat with his knees up to his chest on the cold tile floor of the hospital, drowning in the too-big t-shirt one of the nurses had dug out of the lost and found for him, and waited. The atmosphere was so much different than how it was in the day during visiting hours—the bright fluorescent lights were less sunny and more intimidating in contrast with the dark of night outside, and there were no uneven rhythms of footsteps or quiet amiable conversation in the hallways. Instead, Josuke could only take in the quiet hum of god only knew how much machinery, of well-practiced nurses doing rounds in silence. He’d look up at each solemn man or woman who went by, seeking eye contact, and usually they’d return it—but it was always out of a sort of detached pity, or maybe a question of what he was doing there, and never in the answer or reassurance he so desperately needed.

When he couldn’t take it longer, he stood up faster than his joints would have liked and started on a brisk walk up and down the corridor like a stressed-out zoo animal—rounding a corner and crashing shoulders with Keicho walking in the other direction, the presence of someone he knew coming too fast to be fully reconciled in contrast with having been alone in his thoughts just moments before. Confused as he was, Keicho didn’t share it, and his eyes went wide and bright with recognition.

“Hey!” He whispered in a quiet-loud urgency, volume hampered only by necessity from their location. “Sonofabitch. I _knew_ you were gonna be involved in this thing, I _knew _it.”

“Huh?”

“They’re finally letting me carry one of these,” Keicho hurriedly started to explain, fishing in his pocket for one of the aforementioned _those_: a police radio, the sight of which sent an unpleasant shiver down Josuke’s spine by association. “Call came in about a woman in distress right around your house and I just _knew_ you had to be a part of it.” He’d gotten closer as he spoke, almost manic in his realization of being right, and Josuke could see in his eyes that he was worked up about something—and more than a little exhausted, from the dark circles punctuated underneath them. “So since I’m on call Fridays they sent me off over here with some of the other guys—but you are not gonna fuckin’ _believe_ what’s going on right now, Josuke.”

“Just tell me.”

“They’re staking out that guy’s house,” Keicho hissed through his teeth, though not before looking over his shoulder as though making sure no one was present to overhear in an empty corridor of a local hospital at two in the morning. “Kira. I brought in the pictures you gave me and turns out they’ve been keeping an eye on that girl you mentioned for a long ass time...it's her the call was about, right?” Josuke only had time to nod a little before Keicho shot off again. “So they’re out there right now. And I’m telling you, dude, it’s like a real fuckin’ _standoff_—there’s people in the house for certain but no one’s going in or out. It started right after you and Oku left for the party and it’s still going strong. And you know what the kicker is? No one’s seen or heard from Kawajiri since he clocked out today. Phone goes straight to voicemail, too. Like he disappeared of the face of the fuckin’ _earth_.”

It was way too much for Josuke to handle, reconciling that with what (admittedly little) he’d heard from Reimi’s side—it sent his head spinning, and he couldn’t help but think it’d be a long while until he got it back. “Were you really over there?”

“Uh—no,” Keicho admitted, enthusiasm stemmed a little as perhaps, in his mind, his story became less cool. “I was still home after you guys left, but I was listening in on the radio the whole time to get a sense of how it was going. But that’s not important—what the fuck are _you_ gonna do, man?”

Well, wasn’t that a good question? And hardly one Josuke was prepared to answer, even for himself—especially not for Keicho, who brash as he was wouldn’t have been able to fully grasp the volatile cocktail of base and cringing emotions that went into it for him. _Help them_, he had been instructed so desperately, too much so ignore it. But how? How was he supposed to do something like that? They _were_ being helped, after all, in the standoff that was raging in the villas right this second, and yet Josuke felt intrinsically that it wouldn’t do anything, not immediately or directly. Wouldn’t provide the kind of personal and intimate help Reimi had begged for, the help only her hero or her boyfriend could bring. Wherever her mom and dad and her dog were, where Kira was hurting them—after all, who else could ‘they’ be?—maybe it was at his home in the villas, or maybe it wasn’t. Right, maybe it wasn’t, there was somewhere else they could be...and then all at once it seemed to click for Josuke what he had to do, the horrible, idiotic thing he _had_, rather than could or should, do. It rang detached and urgent in his head, in a voice that must have been Reimi’s: _something happened, Josuke_, _Josuke, go find out._

“I don’t know yet,” Josuke murmured in response, despite the reality that it was becoming more and more clear and detailed in his head with every passing moment. “I guess I’m gonna figure it out as I go along.” Then he left and shuffled down the hall without saying goodbye, which was probably a mistake, but he only realized it by the time he’d already made it to the payphone he’d gone off to search for, and when he looked back over his shoulder to the spot where Keicho had been standing he was gone.

—

“Hello…?”

Already it sounded like Okuyasu had still been crying, a sharp sniffle undercutting his words, and Josuke’s face burnt up at the fact.

“Dude, it’s me. I’m on a payphone at the hospital…”

“Oh.” He was quiet for a while after that, and Josuke opened his mouth to start speaking in his absence before he started again, tripping over the misjudged space between the two of them. “Is she gonna be okay?”

“Y-Yeah. Um, yeah, I think so. I can’t go in yet but...I mean, it doesn’t look like she’s gonna _die_ or anything, you know. But, I wanted to call ‘cuz I wanna apologize—”

“No, dude, _I_ gotta apologize.” He sighed heavily into the phone before continuing, like something was settling within him. “I shouldn’t’ve overreacted like I did. Just...I couldn’t take it, hearing her say that stuff, after everything...”

“She didn’t know what she was talking about—she’s really scared and hurt. I would have told you if it was—if it was like that, with me and her—”

“I know. I know you would’ve...it’s just…” In Josuke’s head, he could imagine what Okuyasu’s face must have looked like, working and straining to articulate whatever it was he was trying to say, and he wished beyond anything that they could be having this conversation in person (if just so he could put his arms around Okuyasu, and maybe kiss him again). “...I mean, it’s really stupid…”

“Even if that’s true I still wanna hear it. Really.”

“It’s just that—I thought—'' He sniffled again, and his voice wavered and went slightly higher with what only could have been the onslaught of more tears threatening at the corners of his eyes. “Guess I’d just thought that maybe you could be _my_ boyfriend. If you wanted to. ‘C-Cuz of what happened at the party and—and after all this blew over I w-was gonna ask you. Shit,” Okuyasu cursed under his breath as he lost his train of thought, just crying softly on the other end of the phone for what felt like so much longer than it must have really been. “It’s my fault. I shouldn't’ve gotten all worked up about it—m-made assumptions like that. I mean I don’t even know that it _meant_ that or if—if y-you’re even—” He struggled with the unspoken word, and the concept it would bring out harsh into the light, and gave up on it with a sad, profound sigh. “I’m just a fuckin’ idiot like always.”

“Okuyasu.”

“Huh?”

“I’m gonna beat your ass for talking about my boyfriend like that.” 

Though there was no way that Okuyasu could have known this, Josuke wasn’t able to shake off the wide grin that had overtaken his face as he listened to Okuyasu speak—even as tears pricked stinging at the corners of his own eyes.

“What…?” It seemed like it took Okuyasu a second to get it, before he made a noise half-way between a laugh and a sob. “Don’t joke around about that, man—”

“I’m not joking. I mean it. I did all that stuff ‘cuz I _wanted_ to. I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t—” the implied word-or-concept tripped Josuke up, too, unable to articulate or think about clearly in a moment like this, so he backtracked on himself and started over. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t _want_ to. And I meant everything I said then, too...I really do love you. I love you. And once all of this is over I want to be your boyfriend, for real, and I w-wanna...I wanna do right by you. I owe you for putting you through all this shit with me,” he broke the mood with a small laugh, but it was airy and nervous, and hardly served that function—after all, the ramifications of everything that was happening was starting to kick in for him, and his tears were falling steadily now and distorted his voice in a way he was sure Okuyasu would be able to recognize the reason for the same way Josuke had recognized with him. “A-And I’m about to do something really stupid, so I want to tell you all of this beforehand in case...in case something happens to me.”

“What do you mean..?”

“I have to go back to the apartment—don’t freak out,” Josuke started, speaking quickly so as not to give Okuyasu the opportunity. “I just _have_ to man, it’s like—I don’t have any say in it. It’s just what I have to do, like part of something way bigger than me. I have to help them—Reimi’s folks, that is. And I _can_, I think I can, I think I’m gonna be okay. But can you do something for me?”

It took a long moment, and a bristling fear went down Josuke’s spine in the absence of Okuyasu’s voice, before it came in what was at first only an affirmative near-whimper. “Mhm. Y-Yeah, what is it?”

“Once I hang up please call the police and tell them to send people over to Reimi’s apartment as soon as they can. See if they can send Keicho if they can. J-Just tell them that...that something’s happening there, and people are being hurt, and to hurry. Okay, I’m going to go now, but, I love you, and I’m going to be okay.”

“I love you too. And you better be okay, man...please.”

“I will. I’ll see you soon, real soon, soon as I can. Promise.”

“Promise—?” Okuyasu started, but Josuke didn’t hear it, hanging up the phone and heading off down the hospital corridor again at a frantic pace as his heart throbbed and pounded just the same.

He took only one detour on his way out of the hospital and back out into the night, whatever it had left in store for him: to peer through the small glass window in the door of Mr. Joestar’s hospital room, quickly looking to make sure there was no one else to see him. He couldn’t make out much of the darkened room, save for a vague shape that must have been him asleep and the faint glowing lights of miscellaneous medical machinery. He would have gone inside, thought about it for just a second; it wouldn’t have been worth the risk of getting caught by a staff member and held back, now that time was of the essence. Besides, the sight of Josuke like this and so late at night would probably just distress him, if he were even in any state to understand or recognize who Josuke was. So he just looked for a moment, sighing, before walking back off on his way and making a promise to himself that some day he’d tell the old man everything that’d happened this horrible, horrible summer—a promise that the both of them would live long enough to see that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [just for fun if anyone wants to check out the really shitty playlist i made for this thing while in a self-isolation induced fugue state](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1j3X2c2Poluj0CdKF2Q18E?si=y-VcUde_QjySIElFJPbL_A)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING IN THIS CHAPTER FOR:  
\- violence  
\- death

Josuke ran, then walked, the whole way back to Reimi’s apartment, simultaneously the longest and shortest run-walk he had ever been on in his life. He wouldn’t have been able to tell a soul how long it really took, only that by the time he got there and stared up at the whole expanse of the building he felt as if his entire soul had been dismantled and rebuilt. That process had imbued him with a deep calm that felt like cheating; he was ready to do this, no longer fearing what he would see but fearing only that it would be too late to do anything about whatever terrible thing he was about to see.

Even with that, though, he hesitated in front of the door. It was cracked open ever so slightly, as though inviting him, dispelling the rational concern that had arrived only then of whether or not he’d even be able to get _in_: but of course, there was no way the universe would have allowed him to be kept out. It was the same door as before, the same door he’d seen that first time and every time afterwards, and yet now it had become all at once the gates of hell. He reached out to pull the door out further, but stopped halfway through and flinched like it had burned him as he caught sound of the noise. He first thought it had to be a mistake, a trick of his ears, but after so long it was clear it couldn’t be any else but what it was: a high pitched buzz, emanating quiet but consistent from the unseen interior of the apartment. A sound Josuke had never heard before, and which shook him to his core like a precursor for what was to come as he took in a deep breath and went inside.

That same breath wrenched itself from him rough and involuntary upon what he saw, making him stumble back against the door and slam it shut as he gasped for air to replace that which had left him. All the furniture had been rearranged, pushed to the center of the room in a sort of semicircle—it was this Josuke noticed first of all, that uncanny shift in the familiar, just a second before he noticed the bodies. Two of them he did not recognize; a man and a woman, maybe in their early forties, each slumped forward in the plush chair they occupied to show off matching dents of wounds in the backs of their heads as they were positioned facing each other. Reimi’s parents—there was no other explanation, no other possibility for even a second. They had been hit by something, some sort of blunt force trauma, but even as Josuke ran over that procedural reality in his mind he got closer, waved his hand in front of each face. Just in case. Even as he saw the dull, gone look in each of their eyes, the mouths hanging slack with blood running from the corners and down to where it stained skirts or sensible dress pants, he had held out some level of childish hope before growing up and abandoning it.

Looking down at Reimi’s mother, where her hands were folded in her lap, Josuke saw that her left wrist ended instead in a ragged, dark red stump, and the summer’s original mystery was finally solved.

The third body, seated between Reimi’s mother and father, was in contrast immediately recognizable—horrible in a new and different way. Kosaku seemed to have been given a much cleaner and nicer fate, and he sat up (or was propped up) much straighter where he occupied the apartment’s now forward-facing loveseat. Were it not for the unmistakable bullet hole between his eyes, Josuke would have been scared for his _own_ life right about now. Cemented on his face was what Josuke supposed could only be the remnants of a shocked surprise, which must have crossed his face and furrowed his brow as he had seen Kira pull the gun on him—after all, he had been so suave.

That high whining was still ever present, almost unbearable, and a wild search for its source gave Josuke an excuse to look away; at the corner of the room, Reimi’s TV was crushed in, still on and flickering with sickeningly bright flashes of color from its cracked screen. Stumbling, he shot a foot out to kick the cord out of the wall and bring the sound to a halt so instantly the absence of that sound was almost more distressing at first. It was quiet, then, so quiet—Josuke mirrored it in his own actions, tiptoeing morbidly curious once more towards the bodies as though there were someone who might hear him. He’d never seen a dead body before, other than his grandfather’s in his casket years ago—but even that wasn’t _really_ death, not like this. This was the _before_ of that kind of death, unfiltered, raw reality; there was something that seemed fundamentally natural and human about the sight, like he’d learned something valuable, horrible as it was. Maybe it was that he seemed to realize in that moment the almost ridiculous nature of physical death, how horrible and funny it was at the same time that a tiny bullet or object the right weight could bring an end pretty much instantly to the whole complexity of a human being.

Contemplating this new and uncomfortable fact he’d been forced to consider, the next sound that came nearly made him jump out of his shoes—radio buzz, louder than expected from the inner pocket of Kosaku’s suit jacket, and then muffled voices speaking. Before he could think, Josuke reached forward and fished the bulky, awkward police radio out, holding it up to his ear to listen in to whatever must have been happening at Kira’s home. Anonymous cops chatted back and forth:

“—and stay down, just to be safe. Do we open fire?”

“We don’t know who’s in there. We might have a hostage situation.”

“Right. I’m sending someone around the back to—hey.”

“What?”

“Look at the window right there—someone’s movi—”

Then all at once, the sound of what could have only been a distant explosion. Josuke tensed up in an action almost painful, realizing he, too, had no clue who was in there. What was happening? Was it helping at all?

“Jesus, what the fuck was that!?”

“Hell if I know—Christ, sounded like something detonated—”

“Stay in place. Warning shot into the unoccupied room on signal.”

Josuke let his hand fall to his waist still clutching the radio as he heard the sound of gunfire, unable to take much more. He took a few staggering steps backwards, towards the door, looking out for a final time over the sight of what was in front of him, the conclusion of everything, where it ended up. He’d known it would be awful, but somehow he’d expected it to be more satisfying than this—expected there to be some sense, at least, that he had finished something, that it was over, that there had as even the slightest consolation a _point_ to all of this, to every nightmarish, traumatic thing he’d had happen to him, had seen happen to others. He stood looking over the scene for just a second longer, waiting for it to kick in, but there was nothing but a hollow sort of misery whistling through his stomach.

“I’m leaving now,” he said under his breath to the three of them in theory and to no one in practice. “I’m gonna let them find you guys on their own. Goodbye.” Silly as it was, he felt like he had to _say_ something, not only to them but to this place, where he would never be again for the rest of his life. Because he _wouldn’t_ be back; it was over now, for better or for worse, and the police _would_ find them here, and it would be solved, and Josuke would go back to living a normal life once he managed to let all of this go. He looked for only a moment longer, fidgeting and worrying his lip with his teeth like he was still holding on and waiting, before turning on his heel and walking back out of the door into the hall, exhaling as if he’d been holding his breath the whole time. It finally felt true as he shut the door, hearing that sound, and for a moment he believed he was truly free, done with everything.

Of course, that was before he heard the echo of footsteps at the very bottom of the stairwell.

Were it not so late at night, and there had been the hum of lives lived in the other apartments and not the eerie silence of sleep, Josuke might not have heard at all, or at least not before it was too late. That thought shook him, and stuck with him for a long while after everything. But he _did_ hear it: the unmistakable tap of dress shoes on concrete stairs, moving at a contained but brisk pace. He knew who it was, of course, knowing there was no other person it could possibly be, but still he leaned over the railing to confirm exactly—just in case he was wrong, and some higher power was taking pity on him this time. He only needed a glimpse of blonde hair at the very bottom of the stairwell to know for certain, and for his body to launch into action without his input on the matter.

There was nowhere to go but back inside without running into Kira and being killed (as there was no other outcome in his mind for what a meeting between them now would look like), or if there was it didn’t come to Josuke nearly fast enough to keep him from darting back into the living room before he could even realize his feet had moved. There was no time for anything but impulse—which was to grab the radio off the top of the wrecked TV where he’d placed it and run down deeper into the apartment into Reimi’s room. He slammed the door behind him before backing as far into the corner as he could go, fumbling to turn the radio on even as his hands shook madly and threatened to drop it—

“Keicho! Keicho are you there!?”

“Nijimura Keicho speaking!” His voice came a second later, professional and subservient on what must have been impulse before he seemed to realize who was actually speaking. “Oh, shit, is this Josuke?”

“Yes! Yes it’s me! I’m in Reimi’s apartment and Kira is on his way up,” Words tumbled out of him faster than he could control, relief instantly flooding him—until it was replaced just and quickly and completely by a chill that froze all of the blood in his body.

_(Kira has a radio too!)_

As if the realization knocked the wind out of him, his whole body seized up as his heart pounded like it was seconds away from stopping completely. Think fast, he had to think fast, remedy this even as he grew more and more and more certain he had just committed suicide...it came to him only as he heard Keicho’s voice, distant from him, an idea maybe just stupid enough to work.

“Why the fuck are you in her apartment—”

“Doesn’t matter! I’m in her apartment, please get someone over here. Kira’s coming. Hurry. I’m in the back-most bedroom.” He spoke clearly, almost over enunciating his location, laying the plan into motion. It _had_ to work, because if it didn’t he was as good as dead. And he had to move quick, because the longer he took doing this the closer and closer Kira got to the top of the stairs…

“Jesus, hold on, okay, someone can probably get over there in like ten minutes—but seriously, what the hell is going o—”

Josuke didn’t stick around to hear the rest of Keicho’s question as he slid the radio under Remi’s bed and darted back into the hallway. There was one other detour he had to make, after all—he nearly slammed into Kosaku’s back as he reached where he sat, frantically reaching around him and fumbling in the dead man’s other inner pocket what he hoped beyond fucking _hope_ he’d seen a glimpse of correctly before. He had been right, thank god; his hands curled shakily around cold metal, and he quickly pulled the pistol out of Kosaku’s pocket (nearly dropping it in the process). Just in time, too, as he could hear the footsteps so much clearer now, the doorknob turning out in the hall—

Josuke slid skittering into the closet and shut the door behind himself just as Kira opened the door to the apartment, looking around the living room back and forth with an expression that was not angry or vengeance-seeking but, instead, horrifying satisfied.

“Hey, neighbor!” He called out confidently, and _there_ in his voice it started to show: a barely-constrained rage that rendered him shouting and tense. “Josuke, you _idiot!_ You forgot I have a police radio! I know exactly where your cute little ass is hiding.” As his hand disappeared into the jacket of his suit, Josuke felt his heart stop as he saw Kira pull out a pistol of his own. Leaning against the back wall of the closet, he clutched the gun he held tight and flush against his thigh, clammy palms threatening to make it slip out of his grasp. _I don’t even really know how to use this thing,_ Josuke realized to himself as he watched the ease with which Kira held the gun, letting hit rest at his hip as he began taking slow, deliberately cruel steps down the hall. _Other than just to point and pull the trigger—but it can’t be that easy. So once it comes down to me versus him—_

The radio clipped to Kira’s belt shook Josuke from his thoughts as it buzzed with incomprehensible voices, doubled by its echo down the hall; Kira looked to the source of the second sound, stopping in his tracks, before he laughed. A mirthless sound, lacking any positive intonation, derived solely from the promise of pain, of death.

“I can _hear _you! Shit for brains. You’ve got about a second to live. Here I come.”

Faster, now, as though emboldened, Kira went the rest of the way down the hall, shoes tapping muted and urgent against the carpet. He paused in front of Reimi’s door for only a second, with what seemed to be (from Josuke’s distance at least) a smirk firmly cemented on his face, before swinging it open and starting to fire. 

Three, four, five shots from where he stood in the doorway before he even properly looked inside the room—the sound was deafening, and the thought of what it would have been like if Josuke had really been _in_ there made him shiver with a theoretical pain. Caught up in that gut, impulsive moment of violence, it took Kira a solid thirty seconds to realize something was off...the lack of any spilled blood or carnage, perhaps, the lack of a body. His posture leaned back ever so slightly, face scrunching up in an expression unreadable from where Josuke watched unseen, before finally stepping inside and looking around the room. He was unseen for a single horrifying moment, stomping around in what must have been a display that would be funny out of context: at its core, Josuke supposed what he’d pulled was a one-hundred-percent-all-natural-home-grown _prank_. That brief rhetorical humor drained completely once Kira reemerged, second radio in hand, fuming.

“You thought that was pretty smart, didn’t you?” He said through gritted teeth, pausing as though for some fucking reason he thought he’d get an answer. In lieu of one, he opted to throw the radio down on the ground with a smash of plastic and wiring almost more upsetting than the preceding gunshots. “Doesn’t matter. You’re dead anyways. So where are you, neighbor, huh?” He spoke like he fancied himself some kind of dangerous snake, spitting poison as he slithered his way back into the living room. Watching him, Josuke slowly, ever so slowly, raised the pistol, ready for the moment he knew was to come.

Kira started with the kitchen, once more out of sight as only his tapping on the tile gave him away. He’d shut up by then, finished with his posturing, and it was somehow more sinister that way—waiting in near silence for when, not if, he would discover Josuke’s hiding place. All the air in the room seemed to have shifted in that tension, heavy and pressing down, buzzing almost the same as the TV had. With no luck in the kitchen, and Josuke’s luck dwindling down, Kira returned to the living room to give it the same tense, silent once-over...Josuke curled his fingers tighter around the grip of the gun, playing in his head over and over what he would have to do once the time came. Each step of it seemed simultaneously so clear and obvious and yet so distant from himself...it was the only thing he could do, and yet he couldn’t imagine ever doing it, never in his life.

Finally Kira turned his head to the closet, and paused—squinting his eyes as though peering intently through the slats, before a wide grin spread over his face. Go time, then. Kira approached, still grinning, slow and measured as ever. Josuke pointed the gun forward, hand shaking ever so slightly, put his finger on the trigger. _I don’t know if this gun has any bullets in it, _he thought to himself over and over and over again, heart thudding painful right in his ears and on the inside of his skull. _I don’t know if this gun is loaded, or if it’s got a safety on, or anything. I don’t even know for certain if I’ll be able to aim right. I have one chance and I might fuck it up, I might not even aim right. _Kira was getting closer and closer, was putting reaching a hand out to pull open the closet door, was still smiling—Josuke could see his teeth, the whites of his eyes, and shut his own as tight as they would go—

“Josuke!”

In the end, he pulled the trigger almost by accident—from the shock of hearing Okuyasu’s voice, which he was certain he must have imagined in his head. It was like his heart stopped, hearing the shot go off, and the recoil caught him by surprise and made him slam back painfully against the back wall of the closet. For a moment afterwards there was nothing—absolutely nothing—and Josuke hesitantly opened his eyes, terrified by that uncertainty.

The gun had been loaded, and the safety had not been on. Kira still stood, and for a moment it looked as though nothing had happened at all; of course, until Josuke’s eyes travelled upwards on his forehead to see the hole he’d put there. It wasn’t as neat as Josuke would have thought from TV and movies—a horrible thing, really, layers of pink and red viscera and all sorts of other things Josuke would never have expected inside of a head if he hadn’t seen it so close, so real. Kira wavered where he stood, eyelids fluttering in a discordant rhythm as blood, oddly delayed, started to pour down his face. At the very end, before he slumped backwards to smash his skull even further against the apartment floor, he seemed for a second to make eye contact with Josuke, and though it was certainly his imagination (for he couldn’t possibly have felt anything at all at that moment), Kira looked almost...impressed. As if, removed violently from all history, from all context, every other thought had fallen away save for _you really did it, neighbor. You actually_ _fucking did it._

It was only once he fell that Josuke saw Okuyasu there, standing in the doorway, shock frozen on his face so securely that it would probably never fully go away—followed by what had have been practically every cop in Morioh barrelling their way into apartment, shoving past him, yelling between themselves. Sirens were blaring outside, and through the tiny window in the kitchen Josuke could spot the unmistakable flash of red and blue alternating outside; all things that must have been present for much longer, gone unseen by Josuke in the vacuum the moment had created. Now that it was gone, it was all rushing back to him, where he was, what was happening, what had happened—and above all the fact that Okuyasu was _here_, that that had been _real_.

No time for questions, no time to ask why; Josuke ran into the hall with all the energy he could muster, and the two of them all but crashed into each other lips-first. Even as the police filed their way into the apartment, looked over things, as even more came up the stairs with stretchers and body bags, as Josuke saw Keicho out of the corner of his eye and the absolutely bewildered look that came over his face, nothing could keep them from each other. Arms wrapped around bodies, pressed against each other like they would have to be peeled apart later—it was over now, it was finally over.


	14. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING IN THIS CHAPTER FOR:  
\- brief violent descriptions

Josuke didn’t know this until much later, but just moments before he had put his initial desperate radio call in the stand-off had ended at Kira’s house; upon busting the door down, the police officers entered to see Shinobu sitting cross legged on the floor, right ear dangling by mere threads of sinew and tissue all but obliterated where she’d been grazed by a bullet, painting the nails of three drugged and unconscious young women. When he saw the news footage the next day of them dragging her out of the house in handcuffs, there was a perplexed expression deep on her face, as though she didn’t know how things could have possibly gone wrong like this.

At first immediately after, once the moment had ended and reality had set in, Josuke had panicked that he, too, would get hauled off just the same—after all, he had killed someone, another reality that needed to be processed. He expressed this fear to Keicho, tugging the blanket he’d been given tighter around himself, and Keicho (probably in shock just the same, and in need of his own blanket), just laughed in a dry, tense sound. “You’re gonna be just fine, man. You shot a real sick son of a bitch, that’s for sure.”

That sick son of a bitch turned out to be Kira Yoshikage, thirty three years old, unmarried. From how it looked, he’d lived in Morioh all his life, and there was no way of knowing right now just how long he’d been “active” for—the use of that word on the news churned something in Josuke, how that was real language they used for real serial killers. He had a day job at a department store in S City, a store Josuke had been to before and now would probably never go to again. A search of his house revealed no less than _twelve_ severed human hands, all left hands, all female, most seeming to have gone through some sort of do-it-yourself attempt at embalming (corroborated by chemicals found in his garage). All had freshly painted nails, red being the most common color, and the majority were adorned with rings or bracelets bought with Kira’s own money as indicated by receipts found in the house—he must have been a rich man, or just a pathetic man with an expensive hobby. The hands were confiscated, and the process of attempting to link them to who they’d once belonged to began; by the end of the summer they’d determined little but the fact that every one of the hands had, at some point or another, come into contact with traceable amounts of semen and/or saliva belonging to the now-deceased Kira Yoshikage.

In addition to this, police officers found dozens of almost impossibly small improvised explosive devices, as well as the materials used to build them—and upon an analysis of Shinobu’s clothes when she was brought in, the odd fine powder that covered her turned out to be the ashes of what must have once been a fourth drugged and unconscious young woman. It was a perfect system, various criminologists and engineers opined in whatever news time they could get—once you cut the hand off, you could dispose of the rest of the body so completely that you would just need to manage the ash, which could be as easy as just waiting for a breeze to come by. Right, it was perfect, and had been perfect for years before this. There were no drugs of any kind found in the house, nor in his system when they autopsied him, which was somehow worse than the alternative.

Once one of his coworkers came in to identify the body as a formality—since there was very little doubt about who it was—he was cremated, ironically enough, and since no one ever came to claim the body a municipally-funded funeral that no one attended was held unannounced on an unknown date. They sent a notice and the ashes to some random cousin of his in K Prefecture, the only living relative they could track down, who was certain to be receiving information she neither needed nor wanted.

Reimi stayed in the hospital a while longer, and left eventually, though Josuke didn’t know exactly how much time passed between these things—though he thought about reaching out to her after everything, he figured it wouldn’t be good for either of them. He saw her only once more, in the park, throwing a frisbee to a huge labrador retriever and kneeling down for it to run into her arms as it brought it right back. Hugging the dog close, she happened to accidentally turn her head to where Josuke had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and her eyes met Josuke’s across the street for just a second—and she smiled at him. Josuke didn’t know what it meant, if she remembered who he was or was just being polite, but it was enough for him, seeing that smile. Josuke never learned this, but eventually she moved far away out of Morioh, away from the Slow Club, away from S City, away from being the Pink Lady—into being Reimi, whatever that would come to mean. 

Mr. Joestar awoke with a gasp and sat straight up the night it all ended, a few moments after Josuke pulled the trigger (though neither of them knew this), and it was the first time he had done so since being hospitalized—steadily, he got better and better, and much to the relief and genuine surprise of the nurses (who had, in all honesty, not expected an eighty year old man who’d had such a dramatic incident to make it even as long as he did) was home in time to see Josuke before he had to go back to school. He spent most of that time in the garden, either watering plants with Shizuka firmly propped against his hip or relaxing in the sun with a book or a cup of tea. It was like a reset, his presence in the house again, everything at last reversed completely and back to normal.

Josuke and his mom had their _Talk_, and she sobbed nearly the whole way through it—Josuke had expected her to be pissed off at him for doing stupid things, for sneaking out, but she just sobbed, to hear everything that had happened. Not just for Reimi’s sake, but for his, too, even over things he hadn’t thought were all that bad. It was an uncomfortable feeling, watching his mom cry, realizing that to other people everything was really so much worse than he’d thought it was in the moment. Still, it was a relief to tell her, and he felt closer to her than he ever had in his life before. He even told her about him and Okuyasu, and she took it well—kept her word from those years ago, to love him no matter what, even if it was a little stranger and more awkward to navigate for real than it must have been for her in theory. 

The day before Josuke had to get on the plane was the hottest so far that summer—clothes-sticking-to-skin hot, the kind no amount of store-bought-mix lemonade with ice could stave off. His mom had tried to talk him into taking a gap semester to recover, process everything that had happened, but he decided against it in the end—what he needed now was to feel _normal_, back into his routine before once and for all, and he was getting there, even if he still sometimes woke up screaming in the night from images of women’s hands and pink bathrobes. It would be a process, he knew—but right now, in this moment, he felt for the first time in a long time genuinely and truly at ease.

In a desperate attempt to beat the heat, he and Okuyasu stripped first the blankets and pillows off of Josuke’s bed, then the clothes off their bodies, before crashing down in just boxer briefs onto the mattress together with a shared laughter that could not be contained. It was too hot to kiss, or hold each other and be close, so they lay on their backs side by side—despite everything, though, they couldn’t keep from letting their fingers intertwine. They turned their heads to face each other, not speaking, but locking eyes in lieu of every word that could have fallen from their mouths. It felt just the same. How many times had they looked at each other head on like this, in this bed, from this angle? Even that summer Josuke could remember so intimately this same view, listening to Okuyasu’s beautiful dream—that had been before, and this was now. Together they had crossed over into a _future_, and it was a brilliant, loved future, one that had good things in store for them for the rest of their long, long lives. They would live long, now, now that there was no more fear of death, and live navigating this new things between them at whatever pace felt right.

Josuke let his head roll back to the side so that he was staring up at his bedroom ceiling, cool and shadowed with the only light coming into the room from his window. He just let himself breathe for a long moment, feeling his chest rising up and down, feeling as Okuyasu’s did the same. He didn’t think about a single other thing. He was _here_ now, grounded, present in the world, here with Okuyasu, and he had made it. He shut his eyes, savoring that feeling, that there was an after to what had happened to him. That he was not cursed forever to live like that, fearing, deceiving. This was here for him, and he could _have_ it.

Okuyasu tugged on his hand before letting go, and Josuke heard the shift of him getting off the bed and the steps of him walking quiet and measured across the floor. He opened his eyes once more, turning to see what was up, and Okuyasu gestured for him to come where he was at the window—but to do it quietly, putting a finger to his lips. There was no way Josuke would refuse, walking over just as stealthily to see what it was, and he had to clap a hand over his mouth at the sight, to keep himself from crying out.

Sitting on the windowsill, close to the glass, was a robin, and it held in its beak a huge black bug. Josuke and Okuyasu watched in mutual silence, arms around each other’s waists, as it swallowed the bug down—watched too as it took off again, disappearing into the beautiful, forever-stretching blue sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THAT'S IT!!!!  
Thank you SO much to everyone who's been reading along and commenting--I've never been able to finish a fic this length before and don't think I would have been able to do it without everyone's wonderful support <333  
also if y'all are interested, i'm on tumblr at gaythoughtz and twitter at lovelozes if you wanna get in touch/talk fic or fandom stuff!  
thank you all again <33 I hope you've had as much fun reading this as I've had writing it!


End file.
